Pre-post post
Some light links before the three-course special next week
For anyone new here, I’m a writer of poetry, downbeat diaries, branding and advertising projects, articles for Creative Review and The Guardian, books about design, and occasional songs. Thoughts on Writing uses language as a way into wider cultural and political issues.
Hello again. Next week, I’m planning to post a three-part ‘case against purpose’ based on a talk I gave recently in Ghent. I’ve made many arguments against purpose in recent years, but never pulled them all into one place, so hopefully it will be useful.
That will land on Monday. In the meantime, I hope some readers will be interested in my recent appearance on the
podcast.The conversation was sparked by my most recent post on here: All art isn’t political. We get into the politics of poetry and creativity in general (from roughly the 35-minute mark onwards). But we also range into other questions, including: Are people brands? Are constraints constraining? Do we learn despite school, or because of it? And are songs better than poems?
Listen on all the various platforms here.
And speaking of songs, I’ve just published the latest instalment of
—an ongoing conversation about songs, writing and songwriting with writer/musician Kate van der Borgh. In between publishing our own songs, we have meandering conversations that go to interesting places. In the latest post, we start off talking about mosaic writing, get into dream states, talk about Hilary Mantel's idea of ghosts as unfulfilled potential, and end up discussing why the supernatural was popular in the early 20th century. The post opens with one of our own creations. They’re all Tin Pan Alley-tinged, written by me and made to sound better by Kate.That’s it for now. I’ll post the post-pre-post post some time post-weekend.