Editorial Picks: Yin F. Lim
The Hinterland editorial team share some of their cultural highlights.
I recently caught The Starling Hotline, a performance by Norwich-based writer, musician and theatremaker Jess Morgan. It’s a captivating storytelling play about birds, climate change and community action, framed by a fraught mother-daughter relationship, and songs written and performed by Jess herself. I'm looking forward to seeing how this work-in-progress evolves. More shows are coming up along the Norfolk-Suffolk coast in Sept & Oct, details at https://www.jessmorgan.co.uk/performance
What I'm reading: I’ve been enjoying State of Play (Out-Spoken Press, 2023) a collection of conversations between poets of East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) heritage from around the world, edited by UK-based Jennifer Wong and Hong Kong-based Eddie Tay. Illuminating discourses around home and belonging, heritage and everyday life, reading and writing, provide insights into the poets’ creative process and the challenges they face as English-language writers from the ESEA diaspora. The informal, intimate back-and-forth, whether in Q and As or emails/letters, provides a connection to poets whose work I admire; I keep coming back to them for comfort, strength and wisdom.
What I'm listening to: A friend introduced me to The Sleeping Forecast on BBC Sounds during a recent road trip, and it’s become one of my sleep aids during too-warm summer nights. I’ve been sent to slumber by the calm monotone of Radio 4’s Shipping Forecast and Springwatch’s Chris Packham reading from 1920s nature writer WH Hudson’s an. I am now looking forward to being lulled to sleep by Strictly Come Dancing contestant (and news presenter) Krishnan Guru-Murthy instructing the waltz against gentle music.
Yin F. Lim spent many years as a journalist writing other people’s stories before deciding to write her own. She completed a Creative Non-Fiction MA at the University of East Anglia and is now working on a family history project about her grandmother. Yin is the co-editor of Hinterland.