This was a great interview I was invited to do last year by Chaucer Cameron and Helen Dewbery of Poetry Film Live, mostly around the Disappear Here project, but it was also a great opportunity to talk about Politics of The Asylum.
Adam Steiner met with us on the day Disappear Here was being launched. He had already given an interview to BBC Radio Coventry and was due on BBC TV later in the day; it was a busy and exciting day. We particularly wanted to find out about the Disappear Here Project but we also talked about his not-for-profit publishing company and his time working for the NHS that had led to his new novel. The time we spent with Adam was filled with his energy, politics and integrity.
PFL: Disappear Here began back in 2015 when you, Brian Harley and Alan van Wijgerden, produced a collaborative poetry film of a local poet, Antony Owen. Tell us about that stage of the project.
AS: I was thinking about the ring road as public urban space. The one way to define the ring road is that it is like a new inner city wall; the conflict is there between it keeping people in and perhaps outsiders out. It’s also a nicely definitive thing of the city centre and in my opinion it makes inner city transport really easy as it’s just 2.2 miles and you can zip around in five minutes, especially at night, and you can see the city from above.