ON THE POD THIS MONTH

CAFES

Holly Pester

On this episode Sam speaks to Holly Pester about her latest poetry collection Cafés (published by Fitzcarraldo.) Here, Holly explores four iterations of the café dream, first as a trap for its unassuming owner - a café with ‘the same ambience as a letter of resignation’. Then a café for lovers, who wait endlessly, only for their lover’s lover to arrive - ‘an engine room of corporate consciousness and horny married couples.’

We spend time ‘on set’ in a café for friends, a place where friendship is ‘performed’ and the cafe-goers become ‘watching shapes blurred against glass.’ And finally we head to the Café Des Artistes where the ultimate cannibalisation of dreams occurs. Described by Fitzcarraldo as both a ‘stylish, political intervention and an elegy for communal space,’ Holly’s writing is, as ever, resistant, loving, vivid and wildly funny - always running ahead of you, waiting as you turn the page only to lead you further on in..

Public Service Announcement:

Holly will be at Edinburgh International Book Festival on August 29th in conversation with Anthony Tao at (the rather terrifyingly named) Venue B. So, if that is your neck of the woods, do get along because Holly Pester reading live is unmissable.

https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/events/holly-pester-anthony-tao-a-place-like-no-other

Praise for Cafes

‘Holly Pester’s café is a place to sink into the soft leather couches, eavesdrop, work and dream: a waiting room both strange and familiar, full of spillages (of coffee) and slippages (of language). A public space or a place to hide; to meet friends and strangers or to be alone; Pester’s brilliance builds this café up and invites us in to linger.’
― Francesca Wade, author of Gertrude Stein: an Afterlife

‘Holly Pester makes the world sing. The song is written by Victoria Wood, and it’s a happy-sad song about utopia. Figured not as a distant place but as a way of being with people and things, that might also be called friendship, that might also be called poetry. She reminds us that poetry is a social activity, an expression of faith in the possibility of connection – with other people, with the world, with happiness – that feels, in our historical moment, like a form of resistance.’ 
― Ben Eastham, author of The Floating World

‘Romance! Revolution! Happy work! Salad! In this ingenious and devastatingly funny work, the perky smooth surfaces of contemporary capitalism are vivisected to show fleshy conflicts and writhing contradictions. On life’s menu can we actually pick our options, rather than just onions? Can we dare to experience one another outside of the transaction? Cafés is a striking and vital work of dreaming and dream interpretations, a clarion call for interruption that will “make thoughts paddle”. Enter the café, scooch closer and awaken your critique!’
― Lila Matsumoto, author of Two Twin Pipes Sprout Water