A minute with Anthony Anaxagorou Poet

Where do you live?
I currently live alone in North London

What did you have for breakfast?
Seven strawberries and a coffee

Describe your perfect day
It would be days when I feel at ease inside my body. Usually when I’m not working or thinking about work. When I’m riding my motorbike, walking around the city or visiting tea shops or a second-hand bookshop.

Best book ever read?
I don’t think I have a best book. I have lots of books which I think I’ll carry with me throughout my life. Books which do different things in different ways which end up becoming part of the way I see the world.

Best childhood memory?
Again, I don’t think I have a best. Times spent with my grandmother, my cousins and siblings all play a role. Memories, the older I become, take the form of feelings and sensations as the images slowly fade.

What is always in your fridge?
Lots of fruit and vegetables. Pickles, coconut water, bits of cheese and some chicken with a few bottles of beer and a bottle of white wine for when the gentry arrive.

What music are you listening to in the car at the moment?
I’m a little obsessed with this new record I discovered by a Danish duo called Svaneborg Kardyb. The album is Over Tage and is like a low-fi jazz electronic vibe. It’s addictive.

What’s your spirit animal?
I’d say a goldfish; I always like the way they seem to just go from one end of the fish tank to the other without really complaining. I tell myself that each time they reach one side it’s like they’re looking at it for the first time all over again like WOW. In fact, if you look at how they move their mouths you could probably make out the word WOW.

What are you most proud of?
As corny and as predictable as it sounds it would have to be my son.

What movie scene has really stayed with you?
The ending of Martin Scorsese’s Casino really messed me up as a kid. For years I kept thinking about how brutal a death that must be. I’m not great at dealing with realism in art, I think that’s why I like the strange and the mysterious – there’s no real danger or threat there.

If you could pick anyone at all (alive or dead) to go out for the evening with, who would it be?
Maybe someone like Jiddu Krishnamurti – I like the idea of dining with someone who speaks in these sagacious absolutes. In fact, the idea of living a life with such conviction has always compelled me as I think I’m always trying to disprove myself in some way.

If you could time travel when/where would you go?
I’d like to go back to the deep past to see how life really was back then. I often fantasise turning up in the 3rd century before Christ with a laptop, smart phone and a Tesla to ask a local who does the best coffee around here.

What is your greatest fear?
Rejection.

What would you say to your 18-year-old self?
Wear jeans that actually fit.

Name the one thing that would stop you dating someone
A lack of curiosity.

If the world is ending in 24 hours what would you do?
Whack the kettle on.

Anaxagorou recently won the £10,000 Ondaatje prize for his book of poetry Heritage Aesthetics, which explores time and place during British imperialism and present-day racism, shaped by his family’s migratory history between Cyprus and the UK