Why do we hold on to things? What does clutter reveal about us? And how do we write about the emotions tied to objects?
In this episode, I sit down with author Jenny Haysom to discuss the themes of keeping and losing in her novel, Keep. We explore the delicate balance between motherhood and creativity, the struggle of carving out solitude as a writer, and the impact of community on personal growth. We also look into the world of home staging, hoarding, and the emotional weight of objects.
Keep tells the moving story of two home stagers and their client, Harriet, an elderly poet who is reluctant to sell her home and let go of the paraphernalia of her life. As these stagers find ways to carefully declutter Harriet’s home, they find that they themselves must attend to the clutter in their own lives. Keep investigates how, why, and what we keep and lose, and the big question: what is the most important thing? Keep is out now with House of Anansi Press.
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If you’d like to get your own copy of Keep, you can do so here.
Show highlights
- What inspired Keep?
- The things we keep that aren’t ours
- Belonging as a thing we don’t keep
- Juggling motherhood and creativity
- Losing the things that are integral to us
- The antidote to loneliness: community & connection
- Writing about the elderly
- Learning to write and publish a debut novel
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About jenny Haysom
Jenny was born in England and raised in Nova Scotia. She has a Master’s degree in English Literature from the University of Ottawa and has served as Prose Editor for Arc Poetry Magazine. Her writing has been published widely, in places CV2, Dusie, The Fiddlehead, The New Quarterly, and The Walrus, as well as in chapbook form (Blinding Afternoons,). Dividing the Wayside, her first full-length collection of poems was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and won the Archibald Lampman Award.
About Keep
Harriet, an elderly poet whose eccentricities have been compounded by years of living alone, must sell her beloved house. Having been recently diagnosed with dementia, she is being moved into a care facility against her wishes. When stagers Eleanor and Jacob are hired for the job, they quickly find themselves immersed in Harriet’s brimming and mysterious world, but as they struggle to help her, their own lives are unravelling.
Keep is a meditation on all the stuff in our lives—from the singular, handcrafted artifact to indelible, mass-produced plastics. As Jenny Haysom excavates the material of our domestic spaces, she centres the people within them and celebrates the power of memory, even when it falters.
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