The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

Paul Muldoon is an Irish poet. He has published more than thirty collections and won a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T.S. Eliot Prize. He is Founding Chair of the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University, and was Oxford Professor of Poetry from 1999 to 2004. He has served as both president of the Poetry Society (UK) and as Poetry Editor at The New Yorker magazine.  He was in Ottawa, Canada for the April 2006 edition of the Ottawa International Writers Festival. We met at my apartment, where we talked about, among other things: poetry as pemmican; initials, dashed expectations, the movie Ice Age, James Joyce’s secular epiphanies, the luck of Shakespeare and Mozart, what constitutes great poetry, judgement, pigs, the depth(s) of Johnny Depp, and hot water bottles.

Nobel Prize winning poet Derek Walcott read at the Blue Metropolis Writers Festival in Montreal several weeks ago. We talk here about England, parents, Ted Hughes, William Blake, combining painting and poetry, the sea, getting laid, and the theme of returning. In addition to experiencing him as an articulate, moving communicator, I also found Derek Walcott to be, like many great men, humble and approachable. 

Gill Coleridge is a partner with Rogers, Coleridge & White, one of the top literary agencies in the world. I spoke with her at the 2006 London Bookfair about how discounting squeezes authors; about the role of the literary agent, how she champions her stable of writers, her bets on hot new literary talent (Peter Hobbs, Adam Thirlwell, Phil Lamarshe, Louise Dean, Jim Younger), plus her thoughts about cake, and suicide.  

Neil Wilson is a former journalist/broadcaster, future publisher, current long-distance runner and founding director of the Ottawa International Writers Festival, considered "one of Canada's greatest literary festivals." We talk about his love of Irish literature and poetry, his founding of the Festival in 1997, what motivates him to do what he does, and this Spring’s impressive, Beckett-backed line-up which goes on stage April 17, 2006. We met at my apartment in Ottawa.  Copyright © 2006 by Nigel Beale

Here is my interview with Stephen Page (unparalleled name for a man in his position) CEO and Publisher of Faber and former British Publishers Association President, conducted hurriedly at the 2006 London Book Fair. We talk briefly about the role and necessity of publishing houses, the impact of the Internet, discounting, supermarkets, ebooks, and 3 for 2 band-aids.   

Rap as rebellion, slang as hipness, and jargon as obfuscatory exclusionary pretense. These are topics discussed during my interview with world-renowned slang lexicographer Jonathon Green last month at his home office in London, England. And bloody invigorating it was too. We talk about why penises are funny and beat out vaginas, why slang is negative and misogynist and how it carries a kind of inventive cleverness seldom found in the harmless drudgery of every day language. We talk too about Samuel Johnson’s political bias, Eric Partridge’s connection to my relative Paul Beale, Jonathon’s insistence on austere objectivity, and the fact that he simply can’t afford to piss around having fun.  Jonathon is often referred to as the English-speaking world's leading lexicographer of slang, and has been described as "the most acclaimed British lexicographer since Johnson."

The Rockcliffe Park Book Fair is one of the oldest, biggest, best used-book sales in Ontario, if not Canada. It's a veritable institution. Book dealers travel across the country every year to cash in on the great deals. More than 3500 volunteer hours go into the making of it annually (other schools boast when they get six hundred over the course of a year). Twenty six thousand books were sold last year with the same number left over. The Book Fair is organized with precision and good humour. It takes place during the first week of November each year and always comes off in style. Too bad the people behind it (most of them are women) don’t run the country. Maggie Knaus, an exuberant book-lover, mother of two and professional photographer, was the ideal choice to chair the 2006 Fair. We met at my apartment, located near the school in Ottawa's Rideau-Rockcliffe neighborhood, to talk about the history of the Fair, how it operates, some of the events that support it, long-time volunteers, where the leftovers end up, well-known visiting authors, and excited kids. 

I’ve known Kensel Tracy for 20 years. We met in 1985 when he was in charge of marketing at the Ottawa-Carleton Tourism Commission and I was Membership Director at the Board of Trade. I can’t think of anyone I’ve ever met who is quite as energetic and creative. Kensel is a true marketer. Over the years he has worked with Ottawa's Festival of Spring, Winterlude, Habitat for Humanity and many other good community causes. More recently he has been a business coach helping small companies to market their products and services. About six months ago he decided to self-publish a book called The Ten Commitments to a Better Life. It contains his thoughts on achieving success. I spoke with him about the steps he took to turn his ideas into a smart looking publication