Katherine Rundell Longlist Author Interview

How does it feel to be longlisted?

It's truly thrilling. I've loved so many of the books nominated in past years: so this is glorious news. 

How did you conduct your research?  

The book, from start to finish, was about a decade's work. I did my doctoral thesis on John Donne at All Souls college in Oxford, which involved largely archival work - many hours in reading rooms across four countries, some beautiful and some ice-cold and smelling of dust and wet wool - and then the writing of the book was roughly another five years. I re-wrote it almost completely three times: I was sometimes exasperated and exhausted by myself and of my work in that time, but never once sick of Donne. 

What do you think is John Donne’s legacy today?

I think he remains the finest poet of desire in English ever to have written: because he salutes, with passion and flair, the strangeness of our desire. He broke almost all the rules of poetry of his time: teaches us that language is not a set of rules, but a set of possibilities. He offers a bulwark against much that we need armouring against - against cheap, easy images of sex and sexuality offered by the media, against anti-intellectualism, against despair. He was a true original, and the legacy of a true original, I think, can be everlasting and inexhaustible, if we do the work of keeping them alive. 

Is there a danger in trying to impose our current sense of morality onto historical figures?

I think it's a very real temptation - but one we should resist, with all the nuance in our arsenal. I try to be very clear in the book that, while a lot of Donne's verse reads as startlingly misogynistic - at one point he compares a woman's sweat to the froth on a boiled shoe - his is a different time, and needs to be read with the care of a historically-informed gaze.

What are you working on next?

My next book is out in October - it's called The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasure, and it's about the beauty and astonishment of the living world - illustrated by Talya Baldwin. And I'm working on a children's novel, which I hope to finish soon.