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How We Read

Matthew Sweet and guests, including neurodivergent poets Debris Stevenson and Anthony Anaxagorou, explore our surprisingly complex and mysterious relationship with text.

The word 'reading' may appear to describe something specific and universal, but in reality it's more of an umbrella term, covering a huge range of ways in which people interact with text. Dyslexia and hyperlexia may be two of the more obvious departures from normative ideas of reading, but whether we're neurodivergent or not we all read in different ways that can vary significantly depending on what we're reading and why we're reading it. Matthew Sweet is joined by Matt Rubery, Louise Creechan and poets Debris Stevenson and Anthony Anaxagorou.

Matt Rubery, Professor of Modern Literature at Queen Mary, University of London has worked on books including The Untold Story of the Talking Book; Audiobooks, Literature, and Sound Studies, Further Reading and Reader鈥檚 Block: A History of Reading Differences. You can hear more from him in an episode about the history of publishing called Whose Book is it Anyway? /programmes/b080xzm6
Dr Louise Creechan is studying is a Lecturer in Literary Medical Humanities at Durham University and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the 成人快手 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to showcase academic research. You can hear her discuss Dickens' Bleak House in an episode called Teaching and Inspiration /programmes/m00169jh
Debris Stevenson describes herself as 'Dyslexic educator, Grime-poet and Dancehall raving social activist'.
Anthony Anaxagorou's latest collection of poetry is Heritage Aesthetics, published on 3rd November 2022.
Free Thinking has a playlist featuring discussions about prose and poetry /programmes/p047v6vh

The theme of this year's National Poetry Day is the Environment and you can hear Radio 3's weekly curation of readings and music inspired by that topic on Sunday at 5.30pm and then on 成人快手 Sounds for 28 days /programmes/b006x35f

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Available now

44 minutes

Last on

Thu 6 Oct 2022 22:00

Broadcast

  • Thu 6 Oct 2022 22:00

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The Arts & Ideas Podcast

The Arts & Ideas Podcast

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