Season 2: Caleb Azumah Nelson in conversation with Casey Bailey

Birmingham Lit Fest Presents….

In June 2021, we hosted an online live event with author Caleb Azumah Nelson about his debut novel Open Water. In conversation with Birmingham Poet Laureate Casey Bailey, they talk about Caleb’s beautiful love story about two young artists who met at a pub and the novel’s broader discussion of race, art, masculinity and vulnerability.

You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.

For more information on Writing West Midlands, visit https://writingwestmidlands.org/

Follow the festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook @BhamLitFest

Credits

Curator: Shantel Edwards (Festival director)
Production: 11C/ Birmingham Podcast Studios for Writing West Midlands

TRANSCRIPT

BLF Series 2, Episode 9: Caleb Azumah Nelson

Intro

Welcome to the second series of the Birmingham Lit Fest Presents…podcast. We are really excited to be back for a second season and to continue to connect readers and writers in the Midlands, and far beyond.

You can download our podcast episodes from all the places you would normally get your podcasts every Thursday and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @bhamlitfest. All of our festival events can be found on our website www.birminghamliteraturefestival.org.

In June 2021, we hosted an online live event with author Caleb Azumah Nelson about his debut novel Open Water. In conversation with Birmingham Poet Laureate Casey Bailey, they talk about Caleb’s beautiful love story about two young artists who met at a pub and the novel’s broader discussion of race, art, masculinity and vulnerability.

Casey Bailey

Hi, guys, I hope you're all good and blessed. I'm really excited about this conversation that we're about to have and I hope you all are too. I am Casey Bailey, Birmingham Poet Laureate and a writer from Birmingham and far more importantly than that, I will be talking to Caleb Azumah Nelson. Caleb is a 27-year-old British Ghanaian writer and photographer who is living in Southeast London. His photography has been shortlisted for the Palm* Poetry Prize and won the People's Choice Award and his short story Pray was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award 2020. Open Water, which we'll be discussing today, is his debut novel. Caleb, how are you?

Caleb Azumah Nelson

Good. I'm good. How are you?

Casey Bailey

I'm blessed. I can't complain. This a real privilege to be having this conversation really. The first thing I wanted to talk about and really get into is around the reception of the book. I first became aware of the book, I was on a podcast with Yomi Sode and Que from Dope Readers who I'm guessing you're aware of, and Que has done a feature on the Dope Readers Instagram page, where he had taken the book Open Water out into water, and took this like amazing photograph. And at the time, it was the first I'd heard of the book. And I thought, what a big response, like what an outlandish response to this book. And actually, it was just kind of like the seed of all of the responses to this book, because it has really taken the literary world by storm, and people are talking about it and can't stop talking about it. And the first thing I really want to ask is, how has that been for you as the author? Firstly, congratulations on writing the book, then congratulations on the book being published. And then this response, how's that feeling for you?

Caleb Azumah Nelson

It’s really something, especially in the current climate of the world, to have this sort of response and to really have the energy that I spent a good amount of time putting into work reciprocated, you know. You can really feel it when someone feels the emotions and the feelings that I put into the book like you when someone really feels the texture and when they reply, that was something that I felt, without even being prompted. Yeah, I'm grateful for it, I think gratitude is the thing, I'm overwhelmed even.

Casey Bailey

Were you taken aback by how broad that response was? It’s definitely deserved but I'm sure you know, that sometimes you feel like something is going to get that response and it doesn't quite, you know, how does it feel getting that kind of, wow, yeah, this has been heard the way that I heard it when I came up with it.

Caleb Azumah Nelson

Yeah, it's amazing. I can really see the moment when I first started putting pen to page and I'm like, in a similar process in my next work and having this going on at the same time is such a wonderful reminder of where the work starts. And it is the page, us being present and really like bringing ourselves to the page and being vulnerable and being disciplined. There was a moment when I was writing Open Water where I quit my job and that was the only thing I was doing. Like I really like gambled and really was like, I need you to trust yourself in this moment because what you need to say right now needs to be expressed. I don't know, it's not that I expected that there would be this sort of reception, but for me, the writing of the thing was the prize. I was reading this book last week and there was a sentence of it that I don't think I'll ever forget. And the guy said ‘love is both the practice and the prize’. And I think this was a real act of love. Like everything I write feels like an act of love and like the prize is the practice.

Casey Bailey

I’m kind of like obsessed with process and how we process things, how we process our emotions. So many heavy themes are dealt with in the book, and you could have dealt with them through photography, I'm sure you probably have, you could have dealt with them through poetry, through theatre. Why do you feel like this particular thing came out as a novel, had you always had this idea of writing a novel or did something make that happen?

Caleb Azumah Nelson

You know, through the different art forms that I straddle, I always think of myself as a writer, despite the fact that language can be so limiting. And we often, I know you know this, but often find ourselves like trying to like bend language to our will, it’s something that I think I'll forever just be trying to get closer to the true expression of how I'm actually feeling. I think when I started writing Open Water, I had just connected with my literary agent and she had come to help with nonfiction actually, I was writing a lot of nonfiction about photography and music and about love. And I was just consistently writing, and she was the one who was like, I think you have the voice for a novel, I think that you could write a novel and it was something that I'd always wanted to do. And I think it was that moment where it's like, okay, I can do this. It was also that moment where I asked myself - I want to write a novel, but what could the novel be like? What could it contain? I know that some of my favourite work is very subversive, or that it kind of straddles different...