Author Anna Barker in Conversation with the Culture County

Award-winning author Anna Barker is set to take the stage at the Durham Book Festival to discuss her debut poetry collection and her latest creative project. Anna will be joined by her mother, Dame Pat Barker, the internationally acclaimed author of 16 novels, including the Booker Prize-winning The Ghost Road from the Regeneration trilogy, and the bestselling Women of Troy series.

The Durham Book Festival is taking place from Friday 10 to Sunday 12 October and celebrates the power of the written word, and is one of the country’s oldest literary festivals. This year the festival welcomes a wide range of authors and writers with over 25 different events taking place across the three days.  

Anna Barker, award-winning author of The Floating Island, Before I Knew Him, and Book of Crow, recently sat down with Culture County to share the inspiration behind her debut poetry collection, her latest project Dipped in Ink, and her thoughts on why Durham is such a brilliant place to be a writer.

Q. What inspired the concept of a dialogue between a woman and a crow, was there a specific moment or experience that sparked this idea?

A. When my daughter was three weeks old, my father died. Death and life happening almost at the same time resulted in a complex grief for me. It was a long time before I felt I could process such an enormous, overwhelming experience, as of course a bereavement is, for many people. I had this urge that I wanted to be 'in conversation' with grief though, and so I started to think about what grief could say to me if it could talk, and what I might say back. Ultimately, writing about my father's death was too close so I fictionalised a 'complex' grief in the form of a woman who manifests her loss in the form of a crow. When she was a child the woman's mother died by suicide and in a dark corner of the room on the same night Crow appears. The poems in Book of Crow are a dialogue that takes place between them. It's my way of talking to the experience of loss and all the emotions that orbit it.

Q. How did the collaboration with The Shining Levels come about? Did their music influence your writing, or vice versa?

A. The Shining Levels write music in response to novels. I'd heard their three previous albums inspired by Durham writers, Pat Barker and Benjamin Myers, and so I wondered what they might do musically in response to something like Book of Crow which is entirely poetry.  Fortunately, they were up for the challenge and I'm absolutely delighted with the end result, the music for the Book of Crow events is wonderfully ethereal and atmospheric. Collaborations between artists working in different fields is very exciting to me and for Book of Crow there's been both actors and musicians as part of the creative performance, adding to and deepening the audience experience of the original work.  They also work in a really interesting and creative way, using musical loops and drawing out lines of the original text to formulate their own response to text, I don't think I've heard anything quite like it. 

Q. How has the audience response varied across the different venues on the tour? Have any reactions surprised you?

A. Book of Crow doesn't shy away from difficult emotions and grief is of course a difficult subject, there's no getting away from that, but the audience response has been overwhelmingly positive. Whatever their own experience of grief, and I think it's different for everyone,  those who have come to see the show have told me they found it deeply moving. They've also told me that it doesn't feel like a poetry reading which is exactly what I hoped for, I wanted people who wouldn't normally go to a traditional poetry reading to think 'yes, this is for me'. The music and actor are a large part of making it a 'beyond poetry' experience. 

Q. How is being part of the Durham Book Festival, and the wider Northern writing community shaped your journey as a writer, and do you think festivals like this play a vital role in nurturing and spotlighting local talent?

A. I'm probably biased, but I do think Durham is an excellent place to be a writer. The reach of New Writing North is huge, but to have them on my doorstep is a privilege. They've also made Durham Book Festival into something really special, such a huge variety of events, authors, discussions. The fact that all events are live- streamed as well as in person is vital. I'm really pleased they've gone to the extra work of making that happen because it means that you don't have to decide between events by being able to access recordings later,  a definite plus with this year's programme especially! 

Q. What’s next for you after Book of Crow? Are there new themes or formats you’re excited to explore?

A. I'm actually talking about my next project, Dipped in Ink, at Durham Book Festival on Saturday, the same day as the Book of Crow performance. Dipped in Ink is part family memoir, part biography about my mother, the novelist, Pat Barker. It spans forty years, from a war time conception to the publication of her first novel, Union Street, and explores family silences, literary legacy and the complexities of maternal inheritance. As we're both writers, we've had some fascinating conversations about writing over the years, whether in her kitchen or mine, so the event is really an extension of those kitchen conversations, except with an audience. I think it will be a really interesting discussion!

Join writers Pat and Anna Barker for an exclusive work in progress event for Anna’s forthcoming part memoir, part biography Dipped in Ink on Saturday 11 October at the Durham Book Festival. Discover more events happening across the festival.