55: Ewan Fernie & Simon Palfrey

Unsound Methods

This month marks the fifth anniversary of Unsound Methods - thank you to everyone who's joined us along the way, and hello to any new arrivals...
In this episode we speak to Ewan Fernie and Simon Palfrey about the writing of their collaboratively composed novel 'Macbeth, Macbeth' (available from Boiler House Press, here: https://www.boilerhouse.press/product-page/macbeth-macbeth-by-ewan-fernie-simon-palfrey)
'Macbeth, Macbeth' is described by its authors as a critical fiction. A sequel, critique, and repetition of Shakespeare’s play. Slavoj Žižek has described it as: ‘a miracle, an instant classic… as close as one can come to a quantum physics literary criticism’.
A video trailer for the book is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru-seZCr3Ho
Ewan Fernie is Director of the 2-million-pound lottery-funded ‘Everything to Everybody’ Project (everythingtoeverybody.bham.ac.uk), which is reviving the world’s first great Shakespeare library and Birmingham’s broader reputation as a pioneering modern city. It was a major influence on the Cultural Programme and the Opening Ceremony of the 2022 Commonwealth Games. His day-job is as Chair, Professor and Fellow at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon and Culture Lead for the College of Arts and Law, University of Birmingham. Ewan's books include: Shame in Shakespeare, The Demonic: Literature and Experience, Shakespeare for Freedom, Spiritual Shakespeares, Redcrosse: Remaking Religious Poetry for Today’s World, Thomas Mann and Shakespeare: Something Rich and Strange, and New Places: Shakespeare and Civic Creativity. For many years, he co-edited the groundbreaking ‘Shakespeare Now!’ series with Simon Palfrey. In 2018, he hosted Radical Mischief: Inviting Experiment in Theatre, Thought and Politics with the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Deputy Director, Erica Whyman at The Other Place. He is now leading a new project, Serious About Comedy, with Sean Foley, Artistic Director of Birmingham REP, as well as an ambitious cross-cultural initiative with the Birmingham-based artist and curator, Mohammed Ali of Soul City Arts. He is writing a book about the Scottish writer and philosopher, Thomas Carlyle, provisionally entitled The Dirty History of Hope.
Simon Palfrey is Professor of English at Brasenose College Oxford University. His recent work explores the unique kinds of life generated by dramatic, poetic, and fictional forms, and the opportunities this opens up for more imaginative, philosophically adventurous, and politically engaged critical work. His books include Doing Shakespeare (Arden, 2004; 2nd ed. 2011), a TLS International Book of the Year; Shakespeare in Parts (Oxford, 2007, with Tiffany Stern), the MRDS Book of the Year; Poor Tom: living King Lear (Chicago, 2014); Shakespeare's Possible Worlds (Cambridge, 2014) Simon’s current projects are inspired by Spenser’s Faerie Queene, including a new bestiary, A Poem Come True, and the twice AHRC-award winning Demons Land, a mixed media event (film, drama, dance, paintings, sculptures, soundscapes, text) that imagines an island built in the image of Spenser’s epic poem (demonsland.com).
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