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The Boundless Podcast
Phillipe Petit on being the “man on wire”, and Molly Steemson on collecting antique wine glasses
In 1974, the artist Philippe Petit embarked on an illegal high-wire walk across the Twin Towers which resulted in notoriety that has followed him ever since. For Boundless, he writes on his struggles to break free of that fame and his desire to be recognised for his many creative endeavors, rather than just being the ‘man on wire’. In this episode of the Boundless podcast he speaks to Erica Wagner on how that experience in New York has shaped him and also about his life as a writer.
After that, the writer and sommelier Molly Steemson joins the pod to talk about her love of antique glassware, and feeling connected to the remarkable stories held, in a strange sense, in those beautiful drinking vessels. She also talks about becoming a sommelier and the joy of drinking. We so often talk about drinking, she says, but we overlook the happy inevitability of becoming drunk.
Philippe's To Reach the Clouds was published by Orion in 2022.
Molly writes story snippets through her Substack, Very Short
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2. Richard Smyth and Róisín Lanigan on nature in the edgelands and where London's Irish diaspora find a sense of home
25:55||Season 1, Ep. 2Bradford Beck has not had a favourable run of literary representations: in the 1840s, Engels wrote that it was a 'coal-black, foul-smelling stream', and the 1900 poem 'The Dalesman's Litany' writes 'I’ve watched snow float down Bradforth Beck / As black as ebiny'. The latter set to music was the first thing that nature writer Richard Smyth learned to play on guitar. Boundless editor Patrick Galbraith headed up to the stream to talk to Smyth on how we're expected to feel in the edgelands, and where nature unexpectedly flourishes.Plus, Editor-at-Large Erica Wagner speaks to Roísín Lanigan about finding a sense of home across both Belfast and London, where to find the Irish in London and how diasporic writing has changed across generations.Richard Smyth's The Jay, The Beech and the Limpetshell: Finding Wild Things With My Kids was published by Icon Books in March 2024.Roísín Lanigan's I Want To Go Home But I'm Already There will be published on 20 February 2025.
1. Pat McCabe and Tice Cin on rhythm, priests, and the horror of writing your second novel
54:17||Season 1, Ep. 1In 1992 Pat McCabe was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for his remarkable novel, The Butcher Boy. Shortly afterwards, Hollywood came calling and his dark and bleakly funny yarn about small town Ireland was turned into a film. Pat talks to Patrick Galbraith, the Editor of Boundless, about what it was like to see his story realised on the screen. Most of the team at Warner Bros, he explains, couldn't understand half of what he'd written, 'the everyday talk of rural Ireland', which was a tricky place to start from. You might have written the words but when big directors, producers, and money men come to town, that doesn't count for much.Erica Wagner, Boundless' Editor-at-Large, then speaks to Tice Cin, the young London-based author and interdisciplinary artist, about the challenge of writing a second novel while you're haunted by the hype that surrounds your first.Pat McCabe's The Butcher Boy Tice Cin's Keeping the House