Monday 15 October 2012

Mushy Peas On Your Body. The Cultural Context

Yesterday I found myself in the unlikely position of explaining the delicacy that is "Yorkshire caviar" to Toby Miller, Professor of Cultural Industries at City University London. He was interviewing me for his podcast which is available to download in fifty countries. The feeling was Mexico, and perhaps Azerbaijan, might not be familiar with this thick green lumpy soup; a traditional accompaniment, here in the North of England, to fish and chips. Never mind their fajitas and their plovs, they haven't lived. But that wasn't the complicated bit. I then had to explain why I was in the ever more unlikely position of  lying naked across a table with mushy peas smeared across my boobs (a piece of battered cod hiding my modesty down below). And all for the sake of my art: poetry.

Sometimes I just don't have the answers, but I do keep asking the questions. Toby Miller had picked up on the email I sent to the Director General of the BBC, George Entwistle, a few weeks ago which had raised the issue of sexism within local radio broadcasting (see earlier blog entry). I think it would be a claim too grandiose to say that that email "went viral". But it certainly got "a bit ill" for a moment out there on the world wide web. I'm delighted that people picked up on it and the issues raised connected with a wider audience. My email is now going to feature at the first meeting of Harriet Harman's new Commission on Ageism and Sexism. I'm not sure of the date, but I have offered to bring the mushy peas.

Toby Miller Podcast:-

Toby's website:- http://www.tobymiller.org/

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