David Harsent: Fire Songs (Part 1)

In this two-part Faber Podcast we talk to David Harsent about his eleventh poetry collection 'Fire Songs'. The poems in 'Fire Songs' are full of haunting imagery and writing of sheer visceral power, and part one of the interview focuses on the themes of Fire, War and its aftermath, and the Rat – an ineradicable creature, ‘survivor of Fire and Flood’ that remains unscathed after the Apocalypse with designs on inheriting the Earth. In part two Harsent discusses poems written in response to his experience of living with tinnitus, and concludes with a discussion of religion, in particular the disquieting figure of trickster Christ. Part two also has a complete reading of the first of the 'Fire Songs'.