LRB 45s: Volume 1

Why is the London Review of Books putting out records? Read more about this project on the LRB blog. 

A handmade box-set containing three 7-inch singles and an accompanying 40-page photographic booklet in a numbered, limited edition of just 360. In Volume 1, you’ll find three new recordings of significant longer poems first published in our pages:

Edwin Morgan’s ‘Byron at Sixty-Five’ (1987), read by Dominic West, recorded at 50 Albemarle Street

Mahmoud Darwish’s ‘Requiem for Mohammad Al-Dura’ (2000), read by Khalid Abdalla, recorded at Palestine House

Jorie Graham’s ‘To 2040’ (2021), read by Adjoa Andoh, recorded at the Grant Museum of Zoology 

Each recording was made in a connected location, whose particular resonances you can hear in its background textures. We recorded Dominic West reading Edwin Morgan’s dramatic monologue next to the fireplace at 50 Albemarle Street, into which the only copy of Byron’s memoirs was thrust after his death. Khalid Abdalla, one of the most courageous public figures voicing support for Gaza, read Mohammad Darwish’s elegy in English and Arabic on the top floor of Palestine House, a new ‘cultural embassy’ a short walk from the LRB offices. Adjoa Andoh read Jorie Graham’s dystopian vision of the aftermath of ecocide at the Grant Museum of Zoology, surrounded by the relics of species and biodiversity loss; listen for the faint hum of the strip lighting over the display cabinets.

We will be releasing ten new recordings in total, in four volumes of three, at intervals of two to three months. (That’s ten poems over twelve records because Tony Harrison’s ‘v.’ is so long, it requires a full batch of three all to itself.)