Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour is set to join his wife Polly Samson at this year’s Borris House Festival of Writing and Ideas, in their debut discussion about their songwriting partnership.
The prog rock veteran enlisted his author and journalist wife to write lyrics for recent Pink Floyd albums, namely The Division Bell and last year's final album The Endless River. She is also writing for his upcoming fourth solo album, which this week was given a September release date.
In their first public appearance together, the duo will talk about their creative relationship and the songwriting process at the literary festival in Carlow, which takes place between June 5 and 7.
Polly told the Irish Times: "A friend of ours curates the festival and asked if I could get David to come along. She works so hard on it that even without consulting David, I said I'm sure we could get him to do it. And when I asked, he readily agreed."
Their joint discussion, chaired by author and contributing editor to the London Review of Books Andrew O'Hagan, breaks tradition; Polly has previously shied away from her association with her husband, who joined the veteran prog rock group in 1967 and released one of the biggest-selling records of all time in The Dark Side of the Moon.
Polly explained: "I was always reluctant to be open about it, because it felt like the domain of men with guitars. But David talked a lot about it in the interviews he did for The Endless River, and it was almost like being outed. Then there was suddenly a few articles about writers who were lyricists, especially after Michael Chabon wrote lyrics for Mark Ronson. It turned out Kazuo Ishiguro wrote lyrics and then I was included too, so then it felt okay to talk about - it felt like there were other writers who were lyricists, and we're allowed to do more than one type of writing."
Also appearing at the festival, now in its fourth year, are Ian McEwan, Ann Enright, Kevin Barry, Lisa Hannigan, Joanne O'Riordan and Anthony Beevor, with more due to be announced in coming weeks.
Polly Samson, whose new book A Kindness is released next week, is also set to appear at the Mountains to Sea Book Festival in Dun Laoghaire on March 21.
