We discuss her collection, Doing the Most with the Least, on the Granta Podcast.
‘don’t be / shocked when I say I was in prison you’re still in prison that’s / what this land means prison.’
In this episode, Josie Mitchell talks to Momtaza Mehri about her poetry pamphlet, Doing the Most with the Least, out with Goldsmiths Shorts.
They discuss the value of self-interrogation, the significance of the Black Arts Movement and the limits to checking your privilege.
You can read Momtaza’s poetry and essays on our website. And her recent essay in the Guardian, ‘Anti-racism requires so much more than checking your privilege’, can be found here.
‘There’s this paradoxical nostalgia where even though yi suffered, yi miss it.’
Memoir by Graeme Armstrong.
‘She boils her sentences down to high-sucrose sweeties and calibrates her tone for maximum engagement.’
Fiction by Natasha Brown.
‘The monstrous years of my late teens lay lined up alongside the rest of my life like bullets in a gun.’
A story by Sophie Mackintosh.
‘Without waiting for me she removes her white shirt. Each button a piece of my own spine, undone.’
Fiction by K Patrick.
‘I followed him onto the dancefloor and he put his hands on my hips as if he’d known me for at least an hour.’
Fiction by Saba Sams.
Momtaza Mehri and Warsan Shire talk about nineties London, parentification and diasporic inheritances.
‘like pasolini’s dream of an african oresteia let us be ridiculous’
‘salmaan the second son & his mama’s seventh seal by way of underwater & underemployment’
‘I want the reader to be conscious of reading and not being just drawn into the book and forgetting themselves and forgetting their life.’
Claire-Louise Bennett on her novel Checkout 19.
‘We talked about Alison’s blood. We asked her what she thought this mystery could be. Really what we wanted was to be told that everything was OK. There was a look on Alison's face when she asked. I cannot describe it, but it was not a face seeking medical “facts”.’
