If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, email me on: unfinishing.pod@gmail.com
unfinishing is a podcast that celebrates projects that are unfinished, abandoned, works-in-progress, or not public. Listen and subscribe across platforms here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson
What’s the value to be found in unfinished and private writing, art, music – or any other kind of unfinished pursuit? What stops us from finishing things off? And what might happen if the pressure to complete things disappeared? I ask my guests to search their bottom drawers and the abandoned corners of their laptops to rediscover secret and incomplete schemes.
Contact
Email: unfinishing.pod@gmail.com
Twitter: @TrueBagglerag
Instagram: @unfinishingpod
The artwork for unfinishing was created by Graham Oakes https://www.instagram.com/grahamoakesart/
Series 3
Series 3, Episode 5, with Nathan Waddell. George Orwell and unfinished video games.
Nathan is a lecturer at the University of Birmingham, where he works in the English Literature department. In this episode we talked about a mixture of unfinished things in relation to George Orwell, the writer who’s best known for his novels Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. Nathan talks me through some stories that Orwell left unfinished when he died in 1950. We then go on to talk about Half-Life, an unfinished videogame with Orwellian themes. And, finally, Nathan tells me about his unfinished podcast, which began as a chapter-by-chapter commentary on Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Listen to Series 3, Episode 3 (01:00:28) here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/xynNy96NaIb First broadcast 4 March 2024.
Series 3, Episode 4, with Guy Waites. Sailing solo round the world.
In this epsiode Guy Waites talks about his experience sailing solo round the world, spending months alone at sea as part of the Golden Globe Race.
Guy faced huge storms, enormous waves, and of course the immense psychological challenge of being alone for months and months. Incredibly, it wasn’t any of those challenges that prevented Guy from finishing his circumnavigation in one go. It was: barnacles. So many barnacles attached themselves to Guy’s boat that he was forced to stop to remove them. Despite having been excluded from the race, Guy decided to continue with his journey. He completed his circumnavigation after 287 days at sea – and also having run out of food for the last few of those days.
Listen to Series 3, Episode 3 (41:25) here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/FheqPENNaIb First broadcast 3 January 2024.
In this episode Andy Jaggard tells the story of an unfinished memoir that was written by his father Gerald. Andy discovered the memoir after his father died, and reading it opened up a maze of mysteries and unanswered questions.
The memoir includes a lot of reflection about Andy’s grandfather – who was called Captain William Jaggard and who established a well-known bookshop in Stratford-upon-Avon. Captain Jaggard firmly believed that he was descended from the printers (whose family name is also Jaggard) who published the First Folio of Shakespeare’s work in 1623. In the end Andy hired a professional genealogist to find out whether his grandfather was right.
Listen to Series 3, Episode 3 (59:55) here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/arjZBVwNaIb First broadcast 30 November 2023.
Series 3, Episode 2, with Alix Beeston. Incomplete film, genius, and being batman.
Alix Beeston is a writer and a Senior Lecturer in English at Cardiff University, where she researches and teaches twentieth and twenty-first century film, photography, and literature.
Alix has been studying unfinished creative work. She approaches unfinished films and literary texts as windows onto the realities of artistic production for women, including the systemic barriers that affect that labour. She also argues that unfinished creative work is significant in its own right, even if it doesn’t achieve the completion of a distributed film or a published book.
In summer 2023 she published Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film, a collection of essays that she co-edited with Stefan Solomon.
Listen to Series 3, Episode 2 (48:44) here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/em-anderson/episodes/with-Alix-Beeston–Incomplete-film–genius–and-being-batman-e2arags First broadcast 30 October 2023.
Series 3, Episode 1, with Loose Ends. International finishers, knitting, and mystery stockings.
My guests in this episode to open Series Three are Jen Simonic and Masey Kaplan. Together, Jen and Masey founded the Loose Ends project.
The Loose Ends project has created an enormous community of knitters, embroiderers, and crafters of all varieties around the world, who finish textile works that have been left incomplete when the original crafters have passed away or become ill.
Masey and Jen have some incredibly inspiring and moving stories about the unfinished projects that have been submitted to Loose Ends – as well as some very funny ones.
Listen to Series 3, Episode 1 (43.48) here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/with-Loose-Ends–International-finishers–knitting–and-mystery-stockings-e29ov2f First broadcast 27 September 2023.
Series 2
Series 2, Episode 15, at the Northern Writers’ Awards 2023.
In this special episode unfinishing goes on the road to the Northern Writers Awards (NWAs), which support works in progress. I speak to some of the 2023 winners, alongside judges and authors who have won in the past, including: Dr Louise Powell, winner of the Sid Chaplin Award (2023); Farzana A. Ghani, winner of the Northern Promise TLC Award (2023); Lucy Irvine, agent – Peters Fraser + Dunlop; Sairish Hussain, author and Lecturer in Creative Writing; James Harris, author and 2019 winner of the Hachette Children’s Novel Award; and Naomi Kelsey, author and winner of the Arvon Award (2020) and Northern Writers’ Fiction Award (2014).
Listen to Series 2, Episode 15 (01.14.31) here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/em-anderson/episodes/at-the-Northern-Writers-Awards-2023-e26e3qd First broadcast 7 July 2023.
Series 2, Episode 14, with Victoria Bennett. Memoir, grief, and gardening.
Victoria Bennett is a writer and creative producer. Her work includes poetry, non-fiction, video-game narrative, creative writing facilitation, and publishing. I speak to Victoria about the experience of grief being unfinished, with a focus on her memoir All My Wild Mothers (Hachette, 2023). In the memoir Victoria describes the loss of several members of her family, her experience of motherhood, and the process of creating a garden full of wonder with her young son.
Listen to Series 2, Episode 14 (48.13) here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/em-anderson/episodes/with-Victoria-Bennett–Memoir–grief–and-gardening-e255bfi/a-a9um2hu First broadcast 5 June 2023.
Series 2, Episode 13, with Dr Steve Kershaw. Atlantis, stopping mid-sentence, and English Springer Spaniels.
Dr Steve Kershaw tells me about Plato’s Critias Dialogue, a text that’s not only unfinished but actually ends mid-sentence – and no-one knows why. It also happens to be the source of the legend of Atlantis. We talk about why Plato may have abandoned it, and how its incompleteness has fed into its (mis)interpretation.
Steve’s spent the last 40 years travelling in the world of the ancient Greeks and Romans, both physically and in his head, and he’s been a Classics tutor for some 30 years. He currently works out of the Oxford University Department for Continuing Education. He’s also recently appeared on the BBC’s You’re Dead to Me.
Listen to Series 2, Episode 13 (46.57) here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/em-anderson/episodes/with-Dr-Steve-Kershaw–Atlantis–stopping-mid-sentence–and-English-Springer-Spaniels-e23iemv/a-a9pkrfi First published 9 May 2023.
Series 2, Episode 12, with Jo Moseley. Paddleboarding, rainbows, and crying on camera.
Jo Moseley is a beach cleaner, joy encourager & midlife adventurer. In August 2019, Jo became the first woman to SUP (stand up paddleboard) coast-to-coast 162 miles along the Leeds Liverpool Canal. Jo worked with filmmaker Frit Tam to make a film about her journey called Brave Enough – A Journey Home to Joy.
We speak about Jo’s second book on Paddleboarding, which she took the very brave and unusual decision not to publish. Jo also explains to me the experiences she’s had with miscarriage, and why the grief of that feels to her like it will always be unfinished, as well as telling me how she’s still in an ongoing process of exploring her own dreams and ambitions – which she wasn’t able to realise in her 30s and 40s.
Listen to Series 2, Episode 12 (56.16) here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/em-anderson/episodes/with-Jo-Moseley–Paddleboarding–rainbows–and-crying-on-camera-e21jitb/a-a9jq0kv First broadcast 3 April 2023.
Series 2, Episode 11, with Faye Latham. Erasure, imposter syndrome, and Tipp-Ex.
Faye Latham is a writer, visual poet and rock climber based in the Lake District. Her first poetry collection is called British Mountaineers and in it she uses a style called erasure. This involves taking writing composed by someone else and erasing large parts of it so that what remains creates a poem. British Mountaineers was originally a text by the mountaineer Frank Smythe, who was a well-known climber active in the 1920s and 1930s. Faye and I talk about how creating something new from Smythe’s text felt to her like a process of ‘unfinishing’ it – of showing that the tale he told was not the end of the story.
At the end of the episode we get on to chatting about different forms of erasure/ unfinishing, such as the toppled statue of Edward Colston, and the Banksy artwork (now called Love is in the bin) that involved one of his paintings being shredded just after being sold.
Listen to Series 2, Episode 11 (53.46) here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/hjhThhz3byb First broadcast 3 March 2023.
Rebecca Coles is a mountaineer. Her unfinished project is to climb all 82 of the 4000m alpine peaks with an all-female team. We talked about the great number of different things that have to come together to achieve all 82 peaks, about trying to get to sleep the night before you attempt to summit, and about why Becky enjoys training military personnel. Becky also tells me about what it feels like on a first ascent expedition when you don’t quite make it to the top, and why looking negatively at unfinished things is a dinner-party problem, rather than a personal one.
Listen to Series 2, Episode 10 (44.47) here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/gvK49Ip3byb First broadcast 3 February 2023.
Series 2, Episode 9, with Franco Cookson. Mental preparation, castles, and guaranteed failure.
Franco Cookson is climber and the star of Fall Theory, a film by Alistair Lee that premiered in 2021, and which follows Franco completing the first ascent of an incredibly dangerous route called the Immortal in North Yorkshire.
We talk about my guesses of things Franco may not have finished (two climbing routes and an article it turns out he doesn’t remember writing). We then cover how having unfinished climbing projects is inevitable (since at some point failure is guaranteed), how climbing routes take on personalities as more people complete them, and about the importance of thinking through what could go wrong in preparation for doing a climb. There are also bits about castles in Northumberland, about how the pupils Franco used to teach didn’t know he was also a climber, and – right at the end – a bit about a play Franco started to write while at university in Manchester.
Listen to Series 2, Episode 8 (41.49) here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/wMVyR2b3byb First broadcast 3 January 2023.
In this special episode, unfinishing went on the road to Kendal Mountain Festival 2022. The episode is a collection of interviews with athletes and festival visitors about projects in the outdoors they haven’t finished. It features:
Steve Scott, who’s director of Kendal Mountain Festival. As well as telling me about the history and future of the festival, it turns out Steve has his own unfinished project – he has some really thoughtful ideas for a film on the theme of departure.
Jenny Tough, an author and filmmaker who travels solo across mountain ranges around the world. We talk about procrastination, about the difficulties of recovering mentally after finishing an enormous expedition, and the process of combining travelling with writing.
Charlie Smith, an expert in cold-weather expeditions who’s been attempting to cross Iceland for the last eight years (in the middle of winter, from North to south). The idea was originally born at Kendal many years ago, and Charlie tells me about how making the attempts have become woven into his life and self-development.
Listen to Series 2, Episode 8 (60.02) here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/244nbJKao2gzlnOTNqSTgY?si=5VnAKPaWT4qeGJ11oQfePQ First broadcast 3 December 2022.
Series 2, Episode 7, with Lewis Hobson. Murals, buildering, sci-fi Geordies, sex in space.
Lewis Hobson is the founder of Durham Spray Paints, and he creates beautiful and very large murals for communities and local businesses around the North East. We spoke about Lewis’s move from doing graffiti to doing murals, taking risks, and having the optimism to start new projects without worrying about where they’re going. I had a lot of fun talking to Lewis about a whole range of unfinished projects, including a climbing YouTube channel, an outdoor community climbing wall, and a series of stories and novels that were inspired by vivid dreams.
Listen to Series 2, Episode 7 (34.50) here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/244nbJKao2gzlnOTNqSTgY?si=5VnAKPaWT4qeGJ11oQfePQ First broadcast 14 September 2022.
Anna Fleming is a climber and a writer. In January 2022 she published Time on Rock – A Climber’s Route into the Mountains, which in July was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize for nature writing.
In Anna’s words Time on Rock is a nature writing book about rock climbing. In it, she traces how she learnt to climb, and she shows how being a climber can give you a privileged and distinctive physical understanding of different landscapes. Time on Rock does a wonderful job of illustrating how climbing is an ever-changing, ever-developing way of life: in other words something that very much can’t be finished.
In our conversation we talk about how climbing can be affected by other aspects of life, such as different relationships with climbing partners, where you live, and death and injury among members of the climbing community. We also talk about climbing as ‘embodied chess’, parenting, and how climbing demands a perfect balance between introversion and extraversion. (And, right at the end, Anna has some tips about vomiting seabirds).
Listen to Series 2, Episode 6 (38.30) here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/yWft9UGAvsb First broadcast 14 August 2022.
Series 2, Episode 5, with Matt Busher. Technological Fruit.
Matt Busher is a designer and art director who started making a solar-powered web server in the summer of 2020. He’s got lots of fascinating things to say about teaching yourself how to do things like that – and about finding low-tech solutions to problems rather than reaching straight for an app.
Matt’s design practice is called 21-87. He works with individuals and organisations to develop visual identities, publications and spaces guided by an inquisitive, research-led approach.
Listen to Series 2, Episode 5 (35:32) here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/GDNkDx1Avsb First broadcast 14 July 2022.
Series 2, Episode 4, with Graham Oakes. Comedy vampires and Hugh Laurie.
Graham talks to me about his endeavours in stand-up comedy, in sketch groups, and in creating YouTube videos. Graham tells me about how he prepared for his first stand-up gig while carrying mattresses through Newcastle, and about what happened when a community of “real” vampires took against one of his YouTube videos.
Listen to Series 2, Episode 4 (41.49) here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/with-Graham-Oakes–Comedy-vampires-and-Hugh-Laurie-e1jhlpt First broadcast 14 June 2022.
Series 2, Episode 3, with Mark Antony Owen. Facts disguised as fiction and in-between places.
Mark talks to me about his online poetry project Subruria, which is about the place where the suburbs and the rural landscape meet. Listen in to find out why the project gets updated every three years, how Mark has created a coffee-table book on the internet, and how facts become disguised as fiction in his work. Mark is also the creator and curator of poetry journals iamb and After… and is on Twitter (where he can be found leading discussions on all things poetry) here: @MarkAntonyOwen
Listen to Series 2, Episode 3 (34.58) here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/with-Mark-Antony-Owen–Facts-disguised-as-fiction-and-in-between-places-e1ievq6 First broadcast 14 May 2022.
Series 2, Episode 2, with Sophie Taylor. Writing Robots.
Sophie talks to me about a poetry collection she doesn’t want to publish. It was written by an AI text generator, and it’s called deep / FALSE!
In the collection Sophie processes low-fi revenge porn. She emptied notes, police interviews, unsent emails, shopping lists, and voice memos into AI text generators. The AI learned elements of her language and created a parody of her voice to create the poems. The AI not only created fake cultural references and verse, but slowly started telling jokes and even giving advice.
Sophie’s website is here: Www.mrsophie.com It includes examples of her text, audio, and visual work, as well as her radio show ‘Polyfilla’ on No Bounds Radio. The Aphex Twin poetry anthology to which Sophie has contributed is here: https://www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/you-ve-got-so-many-machines-richard-an-anthology-of-aphex-twin-poetry It’s published by Broken Sleep books and is edited by Rishi Dastidar and Aaron Kent.
Listen to Series 2, Episode 2 (32.48) here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/with-Sophie-Taylor–Writing-Robots-e1gkmd7 First broadcast 14 April 2022.
Series 2, Episode 1, with Rishi Dastidar. Postcards for Strangers.
Rishi Dastidar is a poet and copywriter. Rishi’s poetry has been published by the BBC, the Financial Times and the New Scientist, amongst many others. His second collection, entitled Saffron Jack, is published by Nine Arches Press. Rishi is also co-editor of Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, and he serves as chair of the writer development organisation Spread The Word. Rishi has written for many different brands over the course of his career in copywriting, and was recently a judge for D&AD.
Rishi’s unfinished project is Self-Portrait Postcards, which began when he started writing down all of his Facebook updates (filling over fifty notebooks in the process). Rishi ended up collaborating with the designed Matt Busher to create an exhibition in which his updates were displayed on postcards, with visitors invited to choose one to take away with them. For those who are interested, the unfinished novels Rishi mentions in our conversation are Vladimir Nabokov’s The Original of Laura and David Foster Wallace’s The Pale King.
Listen to Series 2, Episode 1 (51.59) here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1YLw8SIn4n7Cp9JdCSxnXr?si=CfMfgQYbR9uLI7U4rshLOQ First broadcast 14 March 2022.
Series 1
Episode 17, with Dr Pete Edwards. Proper Northern History.
Pete is a brilliant tourguide and teacher and has taught in a real variety of settings: a secondary school in Liverpool, Wakefield College, a drop-in centre for homeless people, Greenhead Sixth form college in Huddersfield, and Wakefield Prison. At the latter, he set up the education provision on the Close Supervision Centre for the most dangerous offenders in the High Security estate.
Pete’s unfinished project is his company: Roundhouse History Tours. Pete is one of less than 100 badged guides in the International Guild of Battlefield Guides, and his history tours take clients to an array of fascinating sites, from the European continent to Wales and northern England.
Pete tells me about the sights he takes clients to, all of which have incredibly rich and surprising layers of history; he tells me about the alternative histories he develops for his groups, and we talk about why historians should go outside more.
Listen to Episode 17 (50.40) here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/with-Dr-Pete-Edwards–Proper-Northern-History-e12v7u9/a-a5tln03 First broadcast 17 June 2021.
Episode 16, with Michael Farris Smith. Putting the Nick into Gatsby.
Michael Farris Smith’s novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire and with NPR, among many others, and he’s also been a finalist for the Southern Book Prize and the Gold Dagger Award. His essays have appeared in the New York Times. Michael’s latest novel is called Nick, and it tells the story of Nick Carraway, narrator of The Great Gatsby, before we meet him in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic work which was first published in 1925. Michael has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row to discuss Nick, and the novel also been reviewed in the Guardian and the Times. In the US it’s been reviewed in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the LA Times and elsewhere. We talk about why and how Michael approached Nick as an unfinished character – as someone who we don’t learn that much about in The Great Gatsby – and what it was like having to wait for the copyright on Gatsby to expire before Nick could be published.
Listen to Episode 16 (37.13) here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/with-Michael-Farris-Smith–Putting-the-Nick-into-Gatsby-e116sl8 First broadcast 20 May 2021.
Episode 15, with Richard Hurst. Bomb disposal, sunglasses, and Miranda Hart.
Richard is a brilliant writer and director for television and the stage. His writing includes three series of Bluestone 42, the BBC sitcom about a bomb disposal unit serving in Afghanistan, which he co-wrote and created with James Cary. He co-wrote the multi-award-winning and Bafta-nominated Miranda, also for the BBC, as well as several episodes of Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, which was for ITV2. On the stage, he co-wrote and directed the Olivier Award-nominated Potted Panto and Potted Potter.
Richard tells me about three projects that are either unfinished or unpublished. The first is Bluestone 42 (Richard has lots of ideas about what could happen to the characters), the second is a sitcom about an authoritarian leader that couldn’t go ahead because people were wary of being assassinated, and the third is a novel that’s completely finished but never made it into the public realm.
Richard has lots of anecdotes about the making of Bluestone 42 and Miranda (stick around until the end for the latter), including the real-life inspiration for Bluestone provided by army contacts, and the lunch habits of the Miranda team…
We also have a chat about how Richard had to change certain jokes in performances of Potted Potter and Potted Panto depending on when and where they were being performed, and about whether or not comedy and satire have any effect on politics.
You can read more about Richard’s work here: http://www.richardhurst.co.uk/biog.html
Listen to Episode 15 (1.00.00) here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/with-Richard-Hurst–Bomb-disposal–sunglasses–and-Miranda-Hart-e10ce4s/a-a5fuiun First broadcast 6 May 2021.
Episode 14, with with Maggie Tran. Performance, Zen gardening, and the future of historical gardens.
Maggie has the enviable job of being the Head Gardener at the beautiful Bramdean House in Hampshire. We talk about overlaps between gardening and performance, why gardeners may not be as relaxed as you might think, and the future of historical gardens.
Maggie’s love of gardening began 10 years ago when she started community gardening. It’s led her on a path that’s taken her gardening around the world. She had a colourful career before working at Bramdean. Among other things, she was an artist doing performance and experimental theatre, worked at the Royal Pavilion Gardens in Brighton, and was an RHS/ GCA Interchange Fellow at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania, USA. As Maggie explains in the interview, she is also enthusiastic about sustainability and was awarded the Prince of Wales Trophy for Sustainable Horticulture in 2016.
You can find out all about Maggie’s work via her blog, which is www.hortiventure.com. She’s also on instagram @hortiventure.
Listen to Episode 14 (42.13) here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/with-Maggie-Tran–Performance–Zen-gardening–and-the-future-of-historical-gardens-eveqrh/a-a5b44js First broadcast 22 April 2021.
Episode 13, with Peter Jackson. Moving mansions and making miniatures.
Peter Jackson is an artist. He’s here to talk about buildings that move (Trans-Architecture), and he gives us lots of great examples of when that’s happened and why. Peter even tells me where you can spot Trans-Architecture in Newcastle.
He’s published academic work on the history of art school education, and in his studio practice he is chiefly known for his use of ceramic figures, for which he was selected for Craft Emergency 2016 at ASPEX Gallery in Portsmouth. He has written occasional contributions to online contemporary arts publications ‘Corridor 8’ and ‘This is Tomorrow’. He was previously a studio member at NewBridge Project for five years, during which time he co-curated the exhibition Polyspace with artist Oliver Perry. Jackson is based in Newcastle upon Tyne where he relocated in 2004 from his home in Gibraltar.
Listen to Episode 13 (31.33) here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/with-Peter-Jackson–Moving-mansions-and-making-miniatures-eufiev/a-a56an9b First broadcast 8 April 2021.
Episode 12, with Kevin Frediani. Gorillas, vertical farming, and abandoned gardens.
Kevin Frediani is the Curator of the University of Dundee Botanic Garden. Before that, he’s had a hugely varied career – to name just a couple of his roles, he’s managed the Amsterdam botanic garden and was the first curator or plants at London Zoo. The many rewards he’s received for his work include a Chelsea Flower Show gold medal.
We talk about the gorilla exhibit that he took to Chelsea, the innovations Kevin made in vertical farming, and how gardeners often work for the benefit of future generations rather than their own time.
Kevin is on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/KevinFrediani You can find out more about the botanic garden in Dundee here: https://www.dundee.ac.uk/botanic/
Some special thanks are due for this episode. First, to listener Helen Barker for suggesting that I should speak to a gardener. Second, to Katy Merrington, the cultural gardener at the Hepworth Art Gallery, and to Rebecca Slack from the Plant Network for putting me in touch with Kevin.
Listen to Episode 12 here (43.17): https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/with-Kevin-Frediani–Gorillas–vertical-farming–and-abandoned-gardens-etcp28/a-a51lseh First broadcast 25 March 2021.
Episode 11, with Brenton Clutterbuck. Kanye, silliness, and beach laptops.
Brenton Clutterbuck is a writer, performance poet and educator from Far North Queensland in Australia. His work covers the diverse topics of the underground music scene in Buenos Aires, and what he’s described as the “constructed chaos-worshipping religion Discordianism”.
His unfinished project is a creative written response to Kanye West’s 2013 album Yeezus. Brenton draws on the album’s themes and unusual style to use it as a source of empowerment. Brenton also treats us to some of his funny and insightful performance poetry…and we talk about why he takes his laptop to the beach.
Listen to Episode 11 here (37.18): https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/UnfinishedUnpublished–with-Brenton-Clutterbuck–Kanye–silliness–and-beach-laptops-es98ot/a-a4t7v0r First broadcast 11 March 2021.
Episode 10, with Sarah Geissler. Emotional quilts, dress detectives, and naughty steps.
Sarah Geissler is a fashion historian and writer. She researches costume, homemade clothing, and communities of dress, including cosplay and historical costuming. She also makes her own clothes and has worked as a costume volunteer at Beamish Museum. She researched and co-curated the exhibition ‘Dressing the Decades: 85 years of Visitor Clothing’ at Preston Manor, Brighton. She has previously been a copywriter in luxury fashion, a catwalk video archive annotator, and old style photographer.
In Summer 2020 Sarah was one of the volunteers who engaged in a mammoth effort to sew scrubs for the NHS. Her unfinished project is a quilt made from the offcuts. We talk about how it was useful to have something to do with your hands, about why quilts are particularly emotional objects, and about when you should put projects on the naughty step. Sarah also has fascinating things to say about what you can find out about people just by looking at their clothes…
Sarah can be found on Instagram at @sarahmary.gee, or on LinkedIn at Sarah-Mary Geissler: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-mary-geissler-866431108/
Listen to Episode 10 here (42.07): https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/UnfinishedUnpublished–with-Sarah-Geissler-emotional-quilts–dress-detectives–and-naughty-steps-er22cm/a-a4octmr First broadcast 25 February 2021.
Episode 9, with Adam Smyth. Lists, archival secrets, and redemptive urges.
Adam is Professor of English Literature and the History of the Book at Balliol College, Oxford University. He recently published a fascinating article listing projects that he describes as “abandoned or failed” – making him the perfect guest! You can read his work at adamsmyth.substack.com. We talk (among other things) about why the list might be the ultimate form for unfinished work, about not finding what you’re looking for in archives, and about why we’re so desperate to claim that projects aren’t ever really abandoned.
Adam works mainly on early modern writing and its material forms. Right now he’s editing Pericles for Arden Shakespeare, and writing a trade book about the biography of important makers of books. Adam is also the co-editor, with Gill Partington and Simon Morris, of a new journal about material texts, called Inscription
Listen to Episode 9 (42.13) here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/UnfinishedUnpublished–with-Adam-Smyth–Lists–archival-secrets–and-redemptive-urges-eq8nr2/a-a4k0lub First broadcast 11 February 2021.
Episode 8, with The Dark Material Podcast. Daemons, TV adaptations, and biscuits.
Amy and Iain are in the middle of a chapter-by-chapter read along of Philip Pullman’s best selling Dark Materials series of books.
We talk about the surprising things they’ve discovered while researching Pullman’s work, how they manage to persevere with their mammoth project, and the experience of interviewing actors and creatives who worked on the recent BBC/HBO adaptation of the books. They’ve got great things to say about how TV adaptation can add to the richness of books, and we wonder why talking about daemons is such good pub chat. I also get an exclusive on Amy’s and Iain’s favourite types of biscuit (Iain does something quite odd with his).
Listen to Episode 8 here (1.07.26): https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/UnfinishedUnpublished–with-The-Dark-Material-Podcast–Daemons–TV-adaptations–and-biscuits-epk1v6/a-a4fq2j3 First broadcast 28 January 2021.
Episode 7, with Michael McHugh. Museums, psychics, & fear of failure.
Mike has fascinating things to say about how we can challenge traditional approaches to museum exhibitions, as well as loads of great insights into why fear of failure can make it difficult to start projects. We talk about (among other things): melting down armaments in museums to turn them into records; how hypnosis can go wrong; Ken Campbell and making things heroic; and the time Mike got a medium to do psychic readings of museum objects…(we couldn’t remember the word for this when we were speaking, but I think is called Psychometry).
Check out Mike’s article on his work at the Shipley Museum here: “Beyond The Museum: Chaos Magic, Local History & Occult Data Collection“.
And you can watch the “Beyond the Museum” event on Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SEwQ5WOqio
Listen to Episode 7 here (55.26): https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/UnfinishedUnpublished–with-Michael-McHugh–Museums–psychics—fear-of-failure-eos29s First broadcast 14 January 2021.
Episode 6 of Unfinished/Unpublished was created specially for Star and Shadow Radio’s 24-hour continuous winter solstice broadcast. This episode contains clips of the bests bits from the programme (so far…)
Listen to Episode 6 (38.17) here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/UnfinishedUnpublished–Solstice-Special–presented-by-Em-Anderson-eo87ok
First broadcast 21 December 2020.
In Episode 5 my guest is David Spittle, who is a poet, filmmaker, and essayist. He was recently commissioned to direct and edit a documentary on Austrian Poetry, called Where is Everyone Austria, which is now available on Youtube. David’s first short film, Light Noise, was funded and broadcast by the BBC and is available to watch on iPlayer.
His first full collection of poetry is entitled All Particles and Waves and was published by Black Herald Press earlier this year. This followed his poetry pamphlet, entitled B O X, which was released in 2018. He has also written three operas and, in 2014, was commissioned by Bergen National Opera to write a song-cycle which has since been performed internationally. You can find out more about his work at: www.dspittle.com.
Listen to Episode 5 (41.18) here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/UnfinishedUnpublished–with-David-Spittle–presented-by-Em-Anderson-eo87gq First broadcast 17 December 2020.
BONUS EPISODE: “Stories of Change”.
In this one-off recording, four storytellers describe their experiences of coming to the UK as refugees and asylum seekers. I produced the programme for the Comfrey Project, a charity in Gateshead offering refugees and asylum seekers support and a space in which to garden. The storytellers developed their narratives in workshops run by Sail Creative in 2020.
Listen here (37.41): https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/Stories-of-Change-eoavm8 First broadcast 3rd December 2020.
In Episode 4 my guest is Rachael Shaw, who is a writer. Rachael very generously tells me about the blog she started after being diagnosed with breast cancer in her mid thirties. She turned to writing as a form of therapy, and as a way of helping others who might be going through similar experiences. Rachael is now spurred on to write much more – including regular chats with a critique partner – and (impressively) manages to write every single day.
Listen to Episode 4 (48.37) here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/UnfinishedUnpublished–with-Rachael-Shaw–presented-by-Em-Anderson-eo87de First broadcast 5 November 2020.
In Episode 3 my guest is the writer Mary McGrath. Mary reads her short story, entitled “Sup”, which judges Prue Leith and Stephen Fry shortlisted for the 2020 Mogford Prize for food and drink literature. Mary also gives her tips on how to persevere with writing despite setbacks, discusses the benefits of writing for or towards an audience, and tells us the three things she wants readers to take from her work.
Listen to Episode 3 (53.01) here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/UnfinishedUnpublished–with-Mary-McGrath–presented-by-Em-Anderson-eo87a1 First broadcast 22 October 2020.
In Episode 2 my guest is the artist Gillie Kleiman. The starting point of her work is an interest in dance and in choreography, but her art manifests in a variety of forms. That includes her unfinished project Grief Dances. It’s based on dances Gillie experienced while grieving. Because Grief Dances is unfinished, it doesn’t yet have a set form. One exciting possibility is that audiences could read descriptions of the dances whilst in a theatre auditorium, the stage left empty aside from what viewers imagine to be there. Gillie also has fascinating things to say about what a post-work future might look like, where we work less and do other things more. And that includes recognising the value in activities like vegetable growing and dog walking.
Listen to Episode 2 here (59.53): https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/UnfinishedUnpublished–with-Gillie-Kleiman–presented-by-Em-Anderson-eo876c First broadcast 8 October 2020.
In Episode 1, my guest is musician Sophie Cooper, who was nominated in 2020 for an Ivor Novello Composer Award. Sophie tells me about her unfinished art installation. It’s called “Prog Land” and it’s a model of a theme park based on prog rock album covers. We also talk about how Sophie overcame a disastrous A-level music course, about her terrific work for the DIY music scene, about how babies can learn music, and about how she made a robot and a dinosaur destroy Hawaii. You can find out more about Sophie’s work on her website: www.sophiecoopermusic.com
Listen to Episode 1 here (53.21): https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/UnfinishedUnpublished–with-Sophie-Cooper–presented-by-Em-Anderson-eo871g First broadcast 24 September 2020.
Media
How First World War humour goes far beyond the Wipers Times In this interview with Tim Grout-Smith I talk about the extensiveness of humour in Great War literature, where it appears in the theatre, and the difficulties of detecting censorship (3.38).
Humour, the theatre, and Censorship in the Great War A discussion with my fellow PhD student Jennifer Uzzell on what you could and couldn’t get away with in First World War theatre, how humour helped, and whether war is a laughing matter (4.24).
Appearance on “Mentioned in Dispatches” with Dr Tom Thorpe A discussion of my PhD research on humorous Great War literature: https://lnns.co/l_GHfSLcsU5
Dr Emily Anderson 