OBF 2025: Sindiswa Busuku-Mathese interviews Nick Mulgrew (The Book of Unrest)
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Pagecast was at the 2025 Open Book Festival, where we spoke with authors about their writing journeys and the stories they share with readers. In this episode, Sindiswa Busuku-Mathese interviews Nick Mulgrew about his latest collection, The Book of Unrest, as well as the launch of his new press, Batis Books, which is based in Edinburgh.
More about The Book of Unrest:
An ocean of
floodwater. Shipwrecked toddlers. Skeletons that rise from pristine
beaches. In his second book of poems, Nick Mulgrew confronts the natural
and human disasters of the eastern South African coast – and, in the
process, himself.
An unflinching examination of ancestry and place, of ruined childhoods and a troubled present, The Book of Unrest
conjures a world of alternating beauty and horror; a series of tainted
land-, city and seascapes, increasingly hostile to those living in them.
Drawing upon the wisdom of other Durban writers, Mulgrew interrogates
the purposes of poetry and politics in such a fraught time and place.
Can our traumas be learned from, or do they only shackle us to the past?
In turns elegiac and nihilistic, witty and desperate, sprawling
and precise, these poems sift through personal and collective histories
of mistrust and violence, to find what, if anything, can bring us rest.
Thank you to our furniture sponsor, Zorora:
https://zororasofas.co.za/
#PagecastPodcast #OpenBookFestival #SouthAfricanBooks #BookInterviews #BookPodcast
More about The Book of Unrest:
An ocean of
floodwater. Shipwrecked toddlers. Skeletons that rise from pristine
beaches. In his second book of poems, Nick Mulgrew confronts the natural
and human disasters of the eastern South African coast – and, in the
process, himself.
An unflinching examination of ancestry and place, of ruined childhoods and a troubled present, The Book of Unrest
conjures a world of alternating beauty and horror; a series of tainted
land-, city and seascapes, increasingly hostile to those living in them.
Drawing upon the wisdom of other Durban writers, Mulgrew interrogates
the purposes of poetry and politics in such a fraught time and place.
Can our traumas be learned from, or do they only shackle us to the past?
In turns elegiac and nihilistic, witty and desperate, sprawling
and precise, these poems sift through personal and collective histories
of mistrust and violence, to find what, if anything, can bring us rest.
Thank you to our furniture sponsor, Zorora:
https://zororasofas.co.za/
#PagecastPodcast #OpenBookFestival #SouthAfricanBooks #BookInterviews #BookPodcast
