Michael Pedersen is an award-winning Scottish poet and author and is currently writer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh. His prose debut, Boy Friends, is short-listed for Best Non-Fiction Book at Scotland’s National Book Awards, which will announce its winner at a ceremony in Glasgow on December 7. On December 5 he will be in conversation with Nicola Sturgeon at Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall for a session in which she discusses her love of books, and on December 8 he appears in Cold Turkey at Edinburgh’s Summerhall alongside Hollie McNish, Withered Hand, Charlotte Church and Gemma Cairney. On November 24 he will read from his most recent poetry collection, The Cat Prince & Other Poems, at Edinburgh’s Maison de Moggy Cat Café as part of the capital’s Push The Boat Out poetry festival.
What’s the last book you read?
The Irish poet Nick Laird’s new collection Up Late. It’s about many things, but narrowing it down to a crass cuddle of key words you might say it’s primarily about losing someone dear and the ghastly grief that comes with that. Alongside that, in the fiction world, I’m reading Auto da Fé by Elias Canetti, because its lauded for having one of the greatest depictions of a library in all of literature, and that’s counted as research at the moment for the book I’m writing.
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What’s the last film you saw in a cinema?
Oh, it was an animation presentation by Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson at the GFT – a stunner of film bearing the banner A Cat Called Dom that’s taken them years to make. It’s tender, elegiac and enthralling. They’re BAFTA winning animators that were key cabal at our performance night Neu! Reekie! Now when people talk about the film that nearly broke them, this is one for that category.
What music are you currently listening to?
I’m a Scotland zealot at the moment. This summer has been all about Young Fathers – their bravura and brilliance is like no other band I know. What a ravishing panoply of delights Heavy Heavy is. Give them aw the awards, then again and again. Alongside that the new Rachel Sermanni album Dreamer Awake – it’s poetically thrilling and melodiously enchanting, her best yet I reckon. Withered Hand’s new album How To Love is a total triumph too, worth the near ten year wait. Outside our gorgeous wee country, I’ve been ensconced in the America world Big Thief. Yikes, they’re a thrill of band.
What have you read or watched recently that was completely over-rated?
I’m no talking trash when there’s so much joy to foment. Super soppy, I know. Sorry, it’s not that I’m criticism-averse, far from it, I’ve just too much lustre to chomp on aboot the noo.
Blur or Oasis?
Blur.
What has been your most formative cultural experience and how did it affect you?
Discovering the poetry of Glasgow writer Tom Buchan, it lit a fuse that’s never gone out – his words arrived political, profane, sexy and smutty, and provoked mine into action. Over and above that, meeting Scott Hutchison – it made me want to be a better human, better writer, better friend, better dinner date, all bits better.
What’s your go-to YouTube video?
I’m more for podcasts than YouTube for pleasure and succour – The Blindboy podcast foremost to that. It’s literary, historical, folkloric, wayward, brilliant, sapient, daft, saucy, babbling brook-esque. I’ve seen Darren McGarvey has a new-ish podcast and am about to tuck in to that too. And all the New Yorker’s literary stuff is par excellence. I ate through all that over lockdown. That said, you will catch me clicking on cooking hacks click-bait, and, yes, the odd cat doing something quirky to an epic movie soundtrack too.
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Tetris or Call Of Duty?
Zelda. Sorry, Mario. No, Zelda.
What haven’t you managed to get around to yet but will when you have the time?
I’ve never watched Schitt’s Creek, though good gigglers I know pure love it, and I read with one of the writers, Monica Heisey, at the Edinburgh Book Festival, who was a hilarious. So that’s on the list.
You’re in a station ahead of a journey. What magazine do you grab?
I don’t – I fill up my water bottle, buy some additional edible treats (because I already have some from the gaff that need eating before I go), and then get on the train before they’ve announced the platform cunningly using the Trainline app. I’ll have two books in my bag, a feck load of writing to do, and an audiobook ready to roar.
Favourite comedian and why?
Living, it’s Kevin Bridges, he reigns supreme, and he’s deftly turned his hands to novels now too. I love so many comedy boffins: Sara Pascoe, Fern Brady, Ivo Graham, Lou Sanders, Trevor Noah, Greg McHugh, Simon Amstell, Guz Khan, Billy Kirkwood, heaps and heaps more.
Irvine Welsh or Robert Louis Stevenson?
Irvine (don’t tell the RLS Club! I love him/them too. I’m researching and writing about RLS at the moment too. Yikes, maybe I should switch sides. Too late).
Favourite living author(s)?
For love of the lover, Hollie McNish. For more love, Ocean Vuong. Even greedier with it, Jackie Kay. Yes, I added the s to author in the question and pluralised it. Sneaky wee star slinger, ah ken.
Favourite actor?
Emun Elliott. He’s Scotland’s finest second-in-command on screen and it’s time a worthy leading role came his way. Let’s get Emun working with Lynne Ramsay on an adaptation of Alasdair Gray’s Lanark, surely that bonfire has been lit now Yorgos Lanthimos has done Poor Things? On that front, I’ve not anticipated a new movie as much as this one in years!
Favourite condiment and why?
Hot sauce. Spicy life.
Favourite mollusc?
Oh, the oyster. They’re pearlescent alien aqua plants that allow us to summon the taste of lover’s lips and reminisce about favourite moments with friends lost and here. Has sharing salts every been more gloriously ceremonial? I doubt it. Yup, I conjured this questions. Aye, they go great with hot sauce.
Barbie or Oppenheimer?
Barbie.
Vinyl or MP3?
MP3. Having refused to move to e-books something had to turn digital and, alack, for me, it’s the music.
Who was the second best James Bond?
I’m not even sure what the best one is. I prefer Doctor Who (as if that’s the natural alternative). Garbage did a Bond theme tune once, that one then … for the theme tune. All hail Shirley Manson.
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