Scent

Before his untimely death at the age of 47, Dinesh Allirajah was one of the most versatile and accomplished writers working in the North of England. Whether as a performance poet, literary critic, wry social commentator or masterfully understated short story writer, his work was always international in scope, but local and personal in touch. Witty, irreverent, and intricately observed, his writing was informed by everything from raregroove jazz to experimental theatre, crime noir to stand-up comedy. Yet it always felt, and continues to feel, bespoke to us as readers.

 

The short stories, in particular, allow us to eavesdrop on the most intimate, unattended moments in their characters’ lives. Here, we get to know outsiders – migrant workers, beleaguered mothers, old and unwanted regulars in a pub that’s facing a refurb – people being slowly ushered into the background, or kept at a distance. Yet it is on these peripheries – far from where everyone else is looking – that Dinesh finds his stories, here that identities are reconstructed and renegotiated, here that we learn the most about ourselves.

 

Spanning over twenty years’ work, this definitive volume presents a through-line of Dinesh’s compassion, activism, and literary perspicacity; a clarion call to find essential beauty - in art, music, sport, life - and to pass it on.

Dinesh Allirajah (1967-2014) once said of himself (referencing a Sonny Criss sleeve note): "I am a jazz writer, which is a full-time creative job". Dinesh had many other occupations, too – lecturing in creative writing at Liverpool John Moores University, the universities of Central Lancashire and Edge Hill, running workshops and literacy classes in community centres, schools and prisons, acting as Chair of the National Black Arts Alliance and the National Association for Literature Development, as well as being a long-term director of Comma Press. He was also a DJ, playwright, radio presenter, and cricket blogger. As a poet, Dinesh regularly performed to audiences across the UK, as well as in France, Poland, Germany, Bangladesh and Nigeria. His short stories were featured in numerous anthologies and magazines, and first collected in A Manner of Speaking (Spike Books 2004). Scent is the first comprehensive collection of his work, following his sudden passing in December 2014.