Interview: James Lasdun’s art

James Lasdun published his first book of short stories The Silver Age in 1985. The debut won him The Dylan Thomas Award, and was followed by Three Evenings another book of stories. In 1998, Italian filmmaker, Bernardo Bertolucci, directed the film ‘Besieged’, which was an adaptation of Lasdun’s short story ‘The Siege’.

In 2002 Lasdun published his first novel The Horned Man. The book earned him the New York Times Notable Book of the Year and the Economist Best Book of the Year. His second novel Seven Lies was shortlisted for the 2007 James Tait Black Memorial Prize.

Lasdun is also a highly acclaimed poet. His collections include A Jump Start; The Revenant and Landscape with Chainsaw, which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, and the Forward Poetry Prize in 2001.

Water Sessions, his latest collection of poetry, and first in over a decade, uses the recurrent motif of water to try and understand male sexual anxieties; the relationship between fathers and sons; the space between repression and desire; the dichotomy of the public and private sphere; and how the personal and the political are surprisingly intertwined.