Patti Smith Tore Up Talking About Love and Loss With Dua Lipa in London

Sunday at London’s Royal Festival Hall, Dua Lipa sat down with Patti Smith for the London Literature Festival, which Lipa curated through her Service95 Book Club, and the conversation delivered everything from dream visions to tearful memories. The pair discussed Smith’s new memoir Bread Of Angels, which she called a book of gratitude to everyone who shaped her. Smith admitted she had sworn off memoirs after Just Kids, until a dream about a messenger arriving with a white book changed her mind, and the result is a memoir organized around four dresses given to her by meaningful people in her life.

The talk ranged wide: her father’s lessons on questioning everything, memories of Robert Mapplethorpe and Bob Dylan, and even a drunken Valentine’s Day call from Michael Stipe. But the room went quiet when Smith teared up recalling her first meeting with her late husband, Fred Sonic Smith. She’s spoken before about how her life divides into before Fred and after Fred, and that feeling ran through the whole event. The London Literature Festival continues at the Southbank Centre until November 1.

What made the event special was the pairing itself: a pop star who built a book club into a festival, and a punk poet who spent decades proving that memoir can be art. If you were in that room, or you’ve read the book, we want to hear from you. Which Patti Smith era would you want to write the next chapter on?