:00:00. > :00:10.Now on BBC News it's time for Meet the Author.
:00:11. > :00:21.France celebrated novelist to poet. Michel Faber's success has come in
:00:22. > :00:28.many genres but after the death of his wife Eva, he decided to write a
:00:29. > :00:31.book of poems, Undying: A Love Story., which follows the last
:00:32. > :00:33.stages of her illness and describes the raw day by day process of his
:00:34. > :00:54.own grief afterwards. Welcome. As a novelist, was it difficult to
:00:55. > :01:00.commit yourself, especially under this very painful circumstances, to
:01:01. > :01:06.a poetic form? I didn't feel I was committing myself to anything. In
:01:07. > :01:12.the aftermath of either's death, these poems came to me. I had no
:01:13. > :01:16.conception that I was going to put them out there. They were just
:01:17. > :01:19.suggesting themselves to be written. It seemed perverse not to write
:01:20. > :01:26.them, given that they were coming to me. I didn't feel that I would put
:01:27. > :01:30.them out there, but when I started reading the mad at literary
:01:31. > :01:33.festivals, I noticed that they were connecting with people and I thought
:01:34. > :01:39.that maybe this was something which wasn't essentially private, maybe
:01:40. > :01:46.they could be shared. Reading this very direct, Frank, sometimes brutal
:01:47. > :01:49.poems was, in a strange sort of way, giving people consolation, because I
:01:50. > :01:51.was talking about things which are almost forget -- forbidden to be
:01:52. > :02:08.talking about. -- Even though there's a lot
:02:09. > :02:10.of grieving poetry out there, it tends to be quite
:02:11. > :02:12.decorous and, and beautiful. And you wanted some
:02:13. > :02:15.of this to be raw. I wanted it to be
:02:16. > :02:17.raw and, in fact, I I could have gone on writing
:02:18. > :02:21.the poems until now. But I stopped writing
:02:22. > :02:23.them at the end of 2015, because I felt
:02:24. > :02:25.I'd the stage in my grieving where there
:02:26. > :02:26.was a risk I would just write
:02:27. > :02:28.a beautiful poem that happen to have grief
:02:29. > :02:30.as its subject, rather
:02:31. > :02:31.than feeling grief and needing to express it
:02:32. > :02:32.in They were private expressions
:02:33. > :02:35.of your own feelings, some kind of reassurance,
:02:36. > :02:38.some kind of record, I suppose, But you'd always thought
:02:39. > :02:44.of them are something Well, I have a long record
:02:45. > :02:49.of writing things and not I wrote for 25 years
:02:50. > :02:54.without submitting anything. So, yes, if I had thought
:02:55. > :02:56.that they were just me talking to myself about what I had gone
:02:57. > :03:00.through, I wouldn't There is anger in there,
:03:01. > :03:05.there is unbearable sadness. And there are those
:03:06. > :03:08.moments after your wife's death that everyone
:03:09. > :03:10.will Things, for example,
:03:11. > :03:18.like the death of a cat. Which takes you back in a weird
:03:19. > :03:22.way to your human loss. And it's the kind
:03:23. > :03:25.of thing people think about but don't often say,
:03:26. > :03:29.let alone write down. The poem that was particularly
:03:30. > :03:43.significant on that level is... There is a poem
:03:44. > :03:45.called You Were Ugly. Which talks about what happened
:03:46. > :03:48.to her body as a result of And that's a taboo, you're really
:03:49. > :03:51.not allowed in our... And when I read that poem out
:03:52. > :04:00.on the radio about a year ago, someone phoned in the radio
:04:01. > :04:02.station and said, look, I'm not But I am consoled that
:04:03. > :04:12.someone has expressed this thing which I've
:04:13. > :04:16.been thinking and felt that I wasn't allowed to
:04:17. > :04:17.think. Will this take you into
:04:18. > :04:20.poetry as a medium? No, this will be the only book
:04:21. > :04:25.of poetry that I write. I'm under no illusions
:04:26. > :04:29.that I'm a good enough poet to write
:04:30. > :04:33.poems about anything Does that mean that
:04:34. > :04:38.you will return to fiction? As you say, you had a long
:04:39. > :04:44.period where you didn't You know, you're sort
:04:45. > :04:48.of famously almost reclusive as a writer in that
:04:49. > :04:55.sense, for a long time. Will this have that same
:04:56. > :04:58.effect on you or not? Well, when Eva was ill,
:04:59. > :05:02.and she knew she was going to die, she was very, very
:05:03. > :05:06.upset with my decision, which I had already made, that I would
:05:07. > :05:09.write no more novels. But I would be astonished
:05:10. > :05:17.if I wrote another novel for I do want to write
:05:18. > :05:21.a novel for children. It's something I
:05:22. > :05:24.haven't done before. With each book I wanted to do
:05:25. > :05:26.something that I have I also think that in the world
:05:27. > :05:34.as it currently is, a There are writers,
:05:35. > :05:46.thinking earlier about Thomas Hardy, who lived
:05:47. > :05:51.to the late 20s, but wrote his last novel
:05:52. > :05:54.in the mid-1890s, and spent the rest
:05:55. > :05:57.of his life writing poetry. No, you say you're not
:05:58. > :06:00.going to do another novel, another volume of poetry,
:06:01. > :06:05.but it does seem as if the moment you've reached in your fiction
:06:06. > :06:08.writing and with this break, because
:06:09. > :06:10.of the circumstances you find yourself in,
:06:11. > :06:13.it is time for something completely And something I also want to do
:06:14. > :06:21.is figure out whether I can I'm so used to
:06:22. > :06:28.inhabiting that little sanctum sanctorum and
:06:29. > :06:34.creating works of art, which is an alternative to hanging
:06:35. > :06:36.out with real human beings things that ordinary
:06:37. > :06:42.people know how to do. When you're not writing, when you're
:06:43. > :06:45.not sitting in that quiet I will occasionally read
:06:46. > :06:52.a book about music. It's an extraordinary thing to hear,
:06:53. > :07:05.in a writer of your celebrity and accomplishment,
:07:06. > :07:09.saying he no longer reads fiction. Do you ever feel guilty
:07:10. > :07:12.about that or is It makes, in some ways
:07:13. > :07:19.it makes things a lot easier because it means when I meet
:07:20. > :07:22.another writer and I haven't met their work, haven't read their work,
:07:23. > :07:24.it's not that I'm choosing You can say I haven't read
:07:25. > :07:28.anybody else's either. I haven't read anybody
:07:29. > :07:29.else's either. So that's a sort of
:07:30. > :07:31.socially convenient. But maybe in the future
:07:32. > :07:34.I would like to become the sort of So whether you're writing
:07:35. > :07:42.poetry in the sadness after your wife's death,
:07:43. > :07:47.or whether you are contemplating a move to
:07:48. > :07:51.fiction for young people, or listening to music, you're always,
:07:52. > :07:55.finally, looking for a new horizon. Yes, but maybe the ultimate
:07:56. > :08:00.new horizon is to become Because that has been
:08:01. > :08:06.my mission in a way. Because I started off very,
:08:07. > :08:13.very alienated, very strange. And I didn't want to
:08:14. > :08:17.become an alienated It's frightening in a way
:08:18. > :08:23.for me to become more connected, because as you become
:08:24. > :08:28.more connected with other people, And if you're a solitary fringe
:08:29. > :08:38.dweller, you're protected Whereas once you welcome these
:08:39. > :08:44.people in, life is harsh. But it's a risk
:08:45. > :08:46.you feel you now have I feel it's a risk
:08:47. > :08:49.I now have to take. Well, not have to take,
:08:50. > :08:52.but want to take. Michel Faber, author
:08:53. > :08:56.of Undying: A Love