Holly Pester (Cafés)

Holly Pester comes on the pod this week to talk about her new book Cafés — a long poem described as both an elegy for communal space and a surreal meditation on the state of public life.Pester is also a novelist and senior lecturer at the University of Essex. Her first collection, Comic Timing, was shortlisted for the Forward Prize, and her debut novel, The Lodgers, came out in 2024. Cafés was published this summer by Fitzcarraldo, and has just been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.This interview was recorded at the University of Essex on a windy afternoon amidst the chaos of Freshers Week.Scaffold is an Architecture Foundation production. This episode is sponsored by VELUX. [velux.com/design].Image credit: Fitzcaraldo Editions Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.