Seán Hewitt: Open Heaven
4/29/202659 min
Today we’re joined by poet, lecturer, and literary critic Seán Hewitt. Seán is the author of three original poetry collections, a memoir, and several curations of other poets’ work, from wood engravings to tales of love from the ancient world. His debut novel, Open, Heaven, was published last year and I utterly adored it. A man returns to the small village in which he first fell in love, which summons up memories of the charismatic and impulsive Luke. There’s gorgeous nature writing, and plenty of yearning, but also that perfect literary alchemy that happens when a poet writes a novel. I interviewed Seán at Waterstones with a bunch of you wonderful people – so, here’s what happened. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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First 90 secondsJack Edwards· Host0:00
[upbeat music] Hello, and welcome back to The Inklings Book Club podcast. My name is Jack Edwards, and today we are joined by Sean Hewitt. Sean is a poet, a lecturer, and a literary critic. He is the author of three original poetry collections, a memoir, and several curations of other poets' work, whether that's wood engravings or tales of love from the ancient world. He has such an interesting collection of work, and I'm so excited to be chatting with him today. Now, his debut novel, which we'll be focusing on, is called Open Heaven. It was published last year. It has just been released in paperback, and I utterly adore it. In this book, a man returns to a small village in which he first fell in love, and this summons up memories of the charismatic and impulsive Luke, a boy that he met in his childhood. There's gorgeous nature writing, plenty of yearning, but also that perfect literary alchemy that happens when a poet turns their mind to novel writing. On a line-by-line level, this is just so intricately crafted. And I interviewed Sean Hewitt at Waterstones with a bunch of you wonderful people also there. Thank you to everyone who came. And so without further ado, here is what happened when I met Sean Hewitt. [upbeat music] Sean Hewitt, welcome to The Inklings Book Club podcast.
Seán Hewitt· Guest1:23
Thank you very much for having me.
Jack Edwards· Host1:25
And congratulations on the paperback release of Open Heaven.
Seán Hewitt· Guest1:28
Thanks. It looks pretty,