unfinishing

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, works-in-progress or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please contact us via our website: https://unfinishing.co.uk/.Our guest in this episode is Professor Manuel Barcia. Professor Barcia is Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Global Engagement) at the University of Bath, with responsibility for developing and leading the university’s international engagement. He’s also a world-leading scholar in Atlantic and global history. His work focuses on slavery, resistance, and the legacies of colonialism. Over the years he has been a recipient of multiple research fellowships and awards, including a prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize in 2014. His global perspective is deeply informed by both the nature of his scholarship and his extensive experience working with institutions and researchers from all over the world.Professor Barcia studied History at undergraduate level at the University of Havana in Cuba, then went on to experience life as an international student in the UK when he took a MA in Comparative History (as a Chevening scholar) and a PhD in History at the University of Essex. After concluding his PhD, he taught at the universities of Essex and Nottingham before going to Leeds in 2006.Manuel is here to tell me about two unfinished books. One is titled, The Cuban Sugar Kings: The Untold Story of a Minor League Baseball Team and the Cuban Revolution. It tells the story of the Cuban Sugar Kings, better known as the Havana Sugar Kings, a team who made history. Not only did they maintain a historical relationship with the Cincinnati Reds, but also won the most important prize in Minor League baseball, the mini-World Series of 1960, and found themselves immersed in the events that led to and followed the triumph of the 1959 Revolution led by Fidel Castro. Despite having conducted interviews with members of the team, and having a rich body of research material ready to go, this is a project Manuel has had to abandon and will never be able to finish. The future of Manuel’s other unfinished book is looking more hopeful. It’s called The First Anglo-Asante War: Colonialism and Abolition in the Gold Coast, 1823-1831. Manuel tells us about this complex (and often gory) period of history, as well as the surprising things he’s found in the archives while researching it.Links of interestAbout Manuel: Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Global Engagement)  The Havana Sugar Kings: Havana Sugar Kings – Official League If you liked this episode you can:1. Give it a rating or a review:On Apple: tap on the podcast thumbnail (the logo), and scroll down to below the episodes until you find the ratings and reviews section.On Spotify: click on the three dots below the podcast art and title (next to settings), and select ‘Rate show’.2. Check out the website and sign up to the unfinishing newsletter: https://unfinishing.co.uk/contact3. Tag us in your social media posts!Instagram: @unfinishingpodBluesky: @unfinishing.bsky.social  

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, works-in-progress or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please contact us via our website: https://unfinishing.co.uk/.Our guest in this episode is Chanel Comis, who possibly has the best job ever. Chanel is the co-founder of Wildlife Sense, a conservation and research organisation that specialises in protecting sea turtles on the beautiful Greek island of Kefalonia.Chanel talks about how conservation is ongoing, continuous, potentially un-finishable. work. We learn about what Wildlife Sense has achieved so far, what Chanel and her colleagues want for the future, and why sea turtles are always surprising... You can learn more about Wildlife Sense here: Wildlife Sense - Research & Conservation Organization - KefaloniaAbout Chanel: Chanel’s devotion to conservation efforts and scientific research has led her to work with sea turtles since 2010. She's worked with environmental conservation organizations in America and Greece. She earned her B.S. in Biology and minor in Chemistry with honors from the College of Mount Saint Vincent, NY, while interning at the Bronx Zoo, where she became interested in animal behavior. Chanel graduated from Coastal Carolina University, SC, with a master’s degree in Coastal Marine and Wetland Studies. She conducted her research thesis on loggerhead sea turtle hatchling orientation in Kyparissia, Greece. Soon after she co-founded Wildlife Sense where she now enjoys spending her days working with others to protect sea turtles in Kefalonia, where her family is from.If you liked this episode you can:1. Give it a rating or a review:On Apple: tap on the podcast thumbnail (the logo), and scroll down to below the episodes until you find the ratings and reviews section.On Spotify: click on the three dots below the podcast art and title (next to settings), and select ‘Rate show’.2. Check out the website and sign up to the unfinishing newsletter: https://unfinishing.co.uk/contact This is the best way to stay up to date!3. Tag us in your social media posts:Instagram: @unfinishingpodBluesky: @unfinishing.bsky.socialTwitter: @TrueBagglerag

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, works-in-progress or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please contact us via our website: https://unfinishing.co.uk/.My guest in this episode is Fuschia Sirois, a Professor in Social and Health Psychology at Durham University, and a former Canada Research Chair in Health and Well-being. For over twenty years, Professor Sirois has researched the causes and consequences of procrastination, so she’s the perfect person to speak to about things not getting finished.We talk about what procrastination is, why we do it, and how we can help ourselves to overcome it. Fuschia gives some brilliant insights into why procrastination is bad for your health, and how it's linked to our emotions.Fuschia’s advice on what to do when you find yourself procrastinating are at the end of the episode, but she's also developed a tool to help stop procrastination. It's called TEMPO and you can find out more via the link below. Links of interestFuschia’s website: https://fuschiasirois.com/2024/11/12/do-you-or-someone-you-know-struggle-with-procrastination/Sign up for the TEMPO tool: https://durhamuniversity.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eJzXFb6SBwNPI46 If you liked this episode you can:1. Give it a rating or a review:On Apple: tap on the podcast thumbnail (the logo), and scroll down to below the episodes until you find the ratings and reviews section.On Spotify: click on the three dots below the podcast art and title (next to settings), and select ‘Rate show’.2. Check out the website and sign up to the unfinishing newsletter: https://unfinishing.co.uk/contact This is the best way to stay up to date!3. Tag us in your social media posts:Instagram: @unfinishingpodBluesky: @unfinishing.bsky.social Twitter: @TrueBagglerag

Micah is an artist, designer, and teacher who’s an expert in punch needle rug hooking - a type of textile craft that can be used not only to create rugs and cushions, but also fashion and art.Micah’s unfinished projects include a stalled attempt to create a piece of punch needle art every day for a hundred days, and several ideas for punch needle fashion that she’s never quite got round to starting. We talk about the struggles that have stopped her progressing that work, as well as the complexities of trying to navigate the worlds of art, fashion, craft, and business all at the same time.If that weren’t enough, Micah has also just released her first book, Punch Needle Fashion, which explains how to make different pieces of wearable art. About MicahMicah Clasper-Torch is a Los Angeles-based artist, designer, and educator helping to lead the modern revival of punch needle rug hooking. With a background in fashion design from The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and the Politecnico di Milano in Italy, Micah blends fine art, heritage craft, and wearable design to create one-of-a-kind textile pieces that range from coats and accessories to wall hangings and soft sculpture. In 2019 Micah launched Punch Needle World, an online community, shop and educational platform dedicated to uplifting the craft and its history, and making high quality supplies and training accessible around the world. Her debut book, Punch Needle Fashion, came out in June 2025 from Quadrille –– it brings punch needle into the world of contemporary fashion through 15 original projects and a beautifully photographed exploration of the medium.Links of interestPunch Needle Fashion - https://www.amazon.com/Punch-Needle-Fashion-Accessories-Wearables/dp/1837832218 Micah’s website - www.micahclasper-torch.comMicah’s blog, including information on how to get started in punch needle art - Blog – Punch Needle WorldMicah’s Instagram - @claspertorch & @punchneedle.world

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, works-in-progress or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please contact us via our website: https://unfinishing.co.uk/.My guest in this episode is Tommy Mackay. Tommy is a musician, a comedian, a punk, a satirist, a mature student, a reader of James Joyce, and a writer.He’s the creator of The Daily Reckless, a long-running website known as ‘the paper that’s sick of the news’ – which is jam packed with comic songs.Tommy’s unfinished project is a book called 'The Reckless History Of The 21st Century.' It’s part a history, part memoir, part experimental account of the Daily Reckless.... and of the 21st century. He describes it as ‘an encyclopaedic mish mash reflecting the absurdity of modern times’.Tommy used to play in punk bands in the 70s and 80s, but then resurrected his career to become a popular entertainer on the Scottish comedy circuit. As The Sensational Alex Salmond Gastric Band he has played in comedy clubs across the UK. He was once a regular on SW1 radio in London, as well as appearing in several Edinburgh Fringe shows, including Tartan Special, Best of Scottish Comedian Of The Year and Mark Watson’s ‘The Hotel’. He has also contributed regularly to the Caledonian Mercury and the BBC Comedy Unit’s Rough Cuts. Collaborations include his work with Armando Iannucci, Adam & Joe and journalist Robert McNeil, whose reviews of Scottish MSPs Tommy shaped into a collection of songs about our political leaders (mishaps.htm). He was also half of the short-lived phenomenon that was Whyte & Mackay and the public art agitpoppers The Tam Tam Club.Links of interestRabelais: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francois-RabelaisArmando Iannucci: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0406334/Stuart Lee: STEWART LEE vs THE MAN-WULF : Stewart Lee - 41st Best Standup Ever!Hugh MacDiarmid: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/hugh-macdiarmidP.L. Travers: https://www.britannica.com/biography/P-L-TraversWake podcast: WAKE: Cold Reading Finnegans Wake | Podcast on SpotifyIf you liked this episode you can:1. Give it a rating or a review:On Apple: tap on the podcast thumbnail (the logo), and scroll down to below the episodes until you find the ratings and reviews section.On Spotify: click on the three dots below the podcast art and title (next to settings), and select ‘Rate show’.2. Check out the website and sign up to the unfinishing newsletter: https://unfinishing.co.uk/contact3. Text it to a friend with this link: with Tommy Mackay. Satire, experiment, and Noel Gallagher. — unfinishing4. Tag us in your social media posts:Instagram: @unfinishingpodBluesky: unfinishing (@unfinishing.bsky.social) — BlueskyTwitter: @TrueBagglerag

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete,abandoned, works-in-progress or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson. You can find more episodes and get in touch with us here: https://unfinishing.co.uk/. My guest in this episode is Teresa Stenson, a writer and zine-maker based in York. She’s the creator of My 90s Teenage Diaries, an online project in which she revisits her old diaries and shares extracts alongside present-day thoughts and reflections.She’s also a published short story writer, with work placed in several literary prizes and anthologies, including the Guardian’s Summer Reads contest.My 90s Teenage diaries is a work-in-progress, and in this interview with Teresa we talk about the emotional and practical challenges of keeping it going. Teresa also shares two diary extracts during our interview. One is a letter that her teenage-self wrote to her future husband, and the second is a list of flirting tips. Towards the end of this episode, Teresa tells me about her day job as a freelance ghost writer and editor, helping her clients all over the world to tell their own stories.We also talk about the comedy persona Teresa created sometime in the mid noughties – an alter ego called Bella De La Rocher – who by coincidence has published an unfinished novel. Teresa continues, sporadically, to share Bella’s creative works and her inner world online, though sometimes that's just photos of potatoes. Links of interestMore unfinishing episodes: https://unfinishing.co.uk/.My 90s Teenage Diaries: https://teenagediaries.substack.com/Teresa’s zines are here: https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/TeresaWrites?ref=profile_headerTeresa’s Insta: @Teresa.StensonMost of a Novel by Bella De La Rocher: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Most-Novel-Bella-Rocher-ebook/dp/B07XLP7RB6?ref_=ast_author_dpBella’s insta: @BellaDeLaRocher If you liked this episode you can:1.    Give it a rating or a review: On Apple: tap on the podcast thumbnail(the logo), and scroll down to below the episodes until you find the ratings and reviews section.On Spotify: click on the three dots below the podcast art and title (next to settings), and select ‘Rate show’.2.    Check out the website and sign up to the unfinishing newsletter: https://unfinishing.co.uk/contact 3.    Share it with a friend!4.    Tag us in your social media posts! Instagram: @unfinishingpodBluesky: @unfinishing.bsky.socialTwitter: @TrueBagglerag

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, works-in-progress or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please contact us via our website: https://unfinishing.co.uk/.  My guest in this episode is Dr Michael Shallcross, who is a writer based in York, UK. Michael's unfinished project is called Inscribing Pandemonium. Inscribing Pandemonium is about why authors introduce devils or devil-like characters into their writing, and what happens when they do. Michael focusses on writers who try to use the devil to help convey a particular angle on social and political change - only to find that the devil isn’t always that easy to control. Originally, Inscribing Pandemonium was going to be a traditional academic book, but it became clear that a book just wasn’t going to contain the subject. Instead, Michael left the book unfinished, and he’s now exploring a far more expansive, accessible, and entertaining online format for his work. Michael has a PhD in English Studies from Durham University, and his first book, Rethinking G.K. Chesterton and Literary Modernism: Parody, Performance, and Popular Culture, was published by Routledge in 2017. Michael can be contacted via ⁠⁠⁠Bluesky⁠⁠⁠. If you liked this episode you can: 1. Give it a rating or a review:  On Apple: tap on the podcast thumbnail (the logo), and scroll down to below the episodes until you find the ratings and reviews section. On Spotify: click on the three dots below the podcast art and title (next to settings), and select ‘Rate show’. 2. Check out the website and sign up to the unfinishing newsletter: https://unfinishing.co.uk/contact  3. Text it to a friend with this link: https://unfinishing.co.uk/episodes 4. Tag us in your social media posts!  Instagram: @unfinishingpod Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/unfinishing.bsky.social Twitter: @TrueBagglerag Links of interest About Inscribing Pandemonium: ⁠https://inscribingpandemonium.wordpress.com/the-point/⁠   G.K. Chesterton: https://www.chesterton.org/who-is-this-guy/ Butler Act: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/livinglearning/school/overview/educationact1944/⁠⁠⁠  Kingsley Amis: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsley_Amis Lucky Jim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_Jim Evelyn Waugh: https://evelynwaughsociety.org/about-evelyn-waugh/ J.G. Ballard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._G._Ballard

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please contact us via our website: https://unfinishing.co.uk/. This episode features Kenton Rogers, the director and co founder of Treeconomics. Treeconomics is an organisation that uses the best available scientific techniques to understand and improve how trees enrich our urban and rural spaces. Kenton talks about some of the projects that the team at Treeconomics has completed, and explains why working with trees is always an ongoing, unfinishing endeavour. Kenton is a Chartered Urban Forester and Environmentalist. He’s worked on a range of commercial, urban and community forestry projects in the UK, Europe and North Africa. Kenton was a Trustee of the International Tree Foundation and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He has written for the UK National Ecosystem Assessment and the Springer Handbook of Urban Forests, and co-authored the Haynes Workshop Manual for Trees. ‘Thank the Lord (for Sidmouth  Arboretum)’ was recorded by Kelvin Dent and Tess Bisson, musical director of Sid Vale Folk Choir. Links of interest Treeconomics website and resources: https://treeconomics.co.uk/resources/other-resources/  Birmingham Tree People: https://birminghamtreepeople.org.uk/ Sidmouth Arboretum: https://sidmoutharboretum.org.uk/

Sophia Siddique is a film scholar whose area of focus is contemporary Southeast Asian cinemas, film phenomenology, and genre (horror and science-fiction). She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film at Vassar College. Siddique lives with a lovable feline rascal, Magnus, who is her creative muse!Sophia’s unfinished project is a film called Shirkers, which she created in the early 1990s alongside Sandi Tan and Jasmine Ng. She met Sandi and Jasmine while studying film at Substation, Singapore’s first independent contemporary arts centre. Shirkers is an incomplete film because after shooting was finished the director, Georges Cardona, took the recordings and refused anyone else access to them. The theft meant that Shirkers could never be fully produced and released as a complete feature film. Georges was involved in Shirkers because he taught the film course on which Sophia, Sandi, and Jasmine were enrolled. The footage of Shirkers – but crucially not the sound recordings – was eventually recovered decades later. The recovery took place when, after Georges’ death, his ex-wife found and entrusted the film reels back to Sandi, Jasmine, and Sophia.Sandi Tan tells that story in her excellent 2018 documentary, which is also called Shirkers and is available on Netflix. It contains lots of footage from the original film (which Sophia calls Shirkers 1.0), and features Sophia talking about her experiences of creating it. As Sophia explains in our interview, taking part in the Shirkers documentary (which she refers to as Shirkers 2.0) has allowed her to access whole new ways of thinking about incomplete things, to use exciting experimental forms in her academic work, and to enjoy different, delightful approaches to living creatively.Sophia tells me about the variety of emotions and youthful confidence involved in making Shirkers 1.0; about the vulnerability she experienced when watching Shirkers 2.0; about how her experiences with Georges prepared her for working with difficult people later in her career; about the impact of the Shirkers film on how scholars can think about films that are incomplete or no longer exist; and about the importance of staying for the credits when you go to the cinema.Links of interest: Sophia: https://www.vassar.edu/faculty/soharveyShirkers: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80241061Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished BBC Film, edited by Alix Beeston and Stefan Solomon: https://www.ucpress.edu/books/incomplete/paper Giselle Buchanan: http://www.gisellebuchanan.com/about-1 Allyson Nadia Field, Uplift Cinema: The Emergence of African American Film and the Possibility of Black Modernity: https://www.dukeupress.edu/uplift-cinemaunfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, works in progress, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the ⁠artwork is by Graham Oakes⁠. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], ⁠contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod⁠, or on ⁠Twitter @TrueBagglerag⁠.

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter @TrueBagglerag. My guest in this episode is Robert Hampson, Professor Emeritus in English Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he began teaching in 1973. Robert has dedicated a very large chunk of his career to studying Joseph Conrad, the author who’s probably best known for his novel Heart of Darkness (1899). Robert tells me about two of his unfinished work on Conrad. One is a possible further critical monograph on Conrad, and the other is a recent Ukrainian edition of Conrad’s works for which Robert wrote the introduction. Two volumes of this edition were published before the Russian invasion, with the war then interrupting the project. We then go on to talk about Robert’s poetry. Robert began writing a volume in the 1970s called seaport, which was published in unfinished form in 1995. Robert returned to seaport during lockdown and has now written a (very long) version of the section that was originally missing. We talk about – among other things – the challenges of picking up an unfinished work decades after it was begun. Finally, we discuss another lockdown poetry project of Robert’s that is unfinished, called covodes. This series was – again – interrupted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Robert is also kind enough to give a reading of one of the works in this series. About Robert Robert has been engaged in research on Joseph Conrad since 1971. He has published four critical monographs on Conrad  – Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity (1992), Cross-Cultural Encounters in Conrad’s Malay Fiction (2000), Conrad’s Secrets (2012) and Joseph Conrad Cosmopolitanism and Transnationalism (2023) – as well as a critical biography, Joseph Conrad (2020). He has co-edited a number of volumes of essays on Conrad: Conrad and Theory (1998), Conrad and Language (2016), The European Reception of Joseph Conrad (2022) and Conrad’s Cultural Legacy (2024). He is also the current editor of The Conradian. Robert has edited three Conrad texts for Penguin – Lord Jim (1986), Victory (1989) and Heart of Darkness (1995), and two Conrad texts for Wordsworth – Nostromo (2000) and the Lingard Trilogy (2016). He has been on the Editorial Board of the Cambridge Edition of Conrad’s Works since the 1980s. In addition, he has published numerous essays, articles and chapters in books on Conrad. Robert has published some 15 pamphlets of poetry since 1975 as well as five books of poetry: Assembled Fugitives: Selected Poems, 1973-1998 (2001); seaport (1995, 2008); an explanation of colours (2010); reworked disasters (2012); and covodes 1-19 (2021). The volume reworked disasters was long-listed for the Forward Prize, and selections form the covodes have been translated into Italian and published in Italy. Links of interest Robert Hampson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gavin_Hampson William Roscoe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Roscoe William Rothenstein: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Rothenstein Charles Olsen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Olson

unfinishing is the podcastabout projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter @TrueBagglerag. My guest in this episode is Lorraine Topper, who is a writer and a fashion history researcher. She has, for the last decade, focused on clothing stories from the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Her research has been featured as part of public programmes at the M&S Archive, the V&A, The Courtauld, and the Museum of London. After completing a Master’s in History and Culture of Fashion where she wrote tens of thousands of words about underwear, she really wanted to turn her bra history research into book. However, after years of trying and failing, once she finally had a book contract and tried to get stuck into the writing she realised it wasn't the right path for her... Links of interest: https://linktr.ee/masterofbras

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter @TrueBagglerag. My guest in this episode is Nathan Waddell. Nathan is a lecturer at the University of Birmingham, where he works in the English Literature department. He’s got interests in George Orwell, in the modernist painter and writer Wyndham Lewis, and in many other aspects of early 20th century and inter-war culture. Alongside that – and mostly outside of work – Nathan is also an extremely keen pianist. (And actually he admitted that he spends more time playing the piano than he does reading). That’s a subject for a future conversation though – because 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”. Links of interest Nathan’s podcast, Reading Orwell is available here:  https://drnjwaddell.co.uk/reading-orwell The podcast I mention about the essay as a form is here: Free Thinking, Essay Writing (broadcast 10 January 2024) https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001v1v4 The LRB podcast is here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/podcasts-and-videos/podcasts/the-lrb-podcast

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter @TrueBagglerag. 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. Over the course of the race, Guy and the other entrants faced huge storms, enormous waves, and of course the immense psychological challenge of being alone for months and months. But, 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. Somewhat brilliantly, though, and 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. Find out more about Guy here: https://guywaitessailing.com/ Read about the Golden Globe Race here: https://goldengloberace.com/skippers/guy-waites/ Read about the Jester Challenge here: https://jesterchallenge.wordpress.com/what-is-the-jester-challenge/

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag. 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... But what’s really central to the memoir is the personal story it tells. When Andy found it, it ended abruptly at a crucial moment in the story. A mysterious call from an American researcher eventually prompted Andy to research his father’s life, and to finish the memoir. In the process, he discovered some truly extraordinary events in the history of his family. The completed memoir was published in April 2023. It’s called "Shakespeare Press" - the memoir of Gerald Jaggard completed by Andy Jaggard. Links of interest The Shakespeare Press: https://www.waterstones.com/book/shakespeare-press/andy-jaggard/9781739307707 Find out more about Gerald’s memoir on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/shakespeare_press_book/ Find out more online: https://shakespeare-press.com/

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter @TrueBagglerag. My guest in this episode is Alix Beeston, who 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 is the perfect guest – in the last few years she’s 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, and also as constituting significant artistic work 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. Links of interest Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520381476/incomplete Out of Sight: Modernist Writing and the Photographic Unseen: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/in-and-out-of-sight-9780197673010?lang=en&cc=gb

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag. My guests in this episode to open Series 3 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. To submit an unfinished project to Loose Ends, to volunteer as a finisher or translator, and to donate, visit www.looseendsproject.org.

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter @TrueBagglerag. This is a special episode of unfinishing, all about the Northern Writers' Awards (NWAs), which are perfect for this podcast because they support works in progress. With huge thanks to the staff at New Writing North who run the awards, I went along to talk to some of this year’s winners, alongside judges and authors who have won in the past: Will Mackie, Senior Programme Manager (Talent Development) and Programme Leader (MA in Publishing) Dr Louise Powell, writer and winner of the Sid Chaplin Award (2023) Farzana A. Ghani, writer and winner of the Northern Promise TLC Award (2023) Lucy Irvine, agent – Peters Fraser + Dunlop (NWA Judge) Sairish Hussain, author and Lecturer in Creative Writing (NWA Judge) James Harris, author and 2019 winner of the Hachette Children’s Novel Award Naomi Kelsey, author and winner of the Arvon Award (2020) and Northern Writers’ Fiction Award (2014) You can find out more about the Northern Writers Awards here: https://newwritingnorth.com/northern-writers-awards/⁠

unfinishing is the podcast about things that are incomplete, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter @TrueBagglerag. My guest in this episode is Victoria Bennett, who 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 is 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 experiences of motherhood, and the process of creating a garden full of wonder with her young son. Links of interest All My Wild Mothers: https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/victoria-bennett/all-my-wild-mothers/9781529398618/ Wild Women Press: http://www.wildwomenpress.com/ Women Who Run with the Wolves: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_Who_Run_with_the_Wolves

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are unfinished, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an incomplete or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod, or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag. In this episode, Dr Steve Kershaw talks 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 wrote his Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Richard Buxton, arguably the leading scholar on Greek myth in the world. He’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. Useful links Steve’s Brief History of Atlantis: Plato’s Ideal State (including Steve’s translation of Critias): A Brief History of Atlantis by Stephen P. Kershaw | Hachette UK (littlebrown.co.uk)  Mythologica, Steve’s children’s book on Greek mythology Mythologica by Stephen P. Kershaw | Quarto At A Glance | The Quarto Group (quartoknows.com) You’re Dead to Me episode on Atlantis: You're Dead To Me - Atlantis - BBC Sounds  Steve’s website: http://www.stevekershaw.com/index.html

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are unfinished, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag. My guest this week is Jo Moseley, who is a beach cleaner, joy encourager & midlife adventurer. Alongside her lovely day job, she is also a speaker, writer and podcast host. She’s a single mum of two sons, aged 26 and 22, and she lives on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales. In August 2019, Jo became the first woman to SUP (stand up paddleboard) coast-to-coast 162 miles along the Leeds Liverpool Canal, picking up litter, fundraising for the Wave Project and the 2 Minute Beach Clean Foundation, and raising awareness of the problems of single use plastic. 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 (despite having spent months working on it!) Jo tells me why she made that decision, and the process she went through to (very kindly) explain it to all the people who had helped in its creation. 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. In June 2022, Jo’s first book Stand Up Paddleboarding in Great Britain - Beautiful Places to Paddleboard in England, Scotland and Wales was published by award winning Vertebrate Publishing.  Two of Jo’s films Finding Joy and ⁠Found at Sea⁠ have both won awards. You can find out more at: www.jomoseley.com and Jo's column in Stand-Up Paddleboarding Magazine is here: ⁠https://standuppaddlemag.co.uk/paddleboarding-for-good/⁠ Follow Jo on Instagram (⁠https://www.instagram.com/jomoseley/⁠) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/Healthyhappy50).

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are unfinished, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag. My guest this week is Faye Latham, who is a writer, visual poet and rock climber based in the Lake District. In January 2020 she was awarded the Literature Wales Bursary for Writers Under 25 to support the development of her poetry, which resulted in her work being published in journals and magazines including UKClimbing.com, Lumin Journal, The CTC Rewilding Anthology, and the Cambridge Literary Review. In 2021 she was awarded a grant with the Society of Authors and her pamphlet Ruin/Nation was highly commended in the Poetry Wales Pamphlet Competition. Faye is also one of the organisers of Kendal Mountain Festival.  Her first poetry collection is called British Mountaineers and in it she uses a style called erasure poetry. 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.  We also talk about how Faye turned to poetry partly because she found it hard to finish novels, and about a possible erasure project for the future that has an environmental focus. 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.  Links of interest: British Mountaineers: https://www.littlepeak.co.uk/catalogue/british-mountaineers-international-orders_73/  Frank Smythe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Smythe  Sarah J Sloat's book Hotel Almighty: https://www.sarahjsloat.com/publications/

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are unfinished, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag. Rebecca Coles is a mountaineer. Her unfinished project is to climb all 82 of the 4000m alpine peaks with an all-female team. Becky specialises in remote expeditions and has made first ascents in Nepal and South Georgia, Antarctica. She’s led expeditions on all seven continents, and she’s a Winter Mountaineering and Climbing Instructor and an International Mountain Leader. She has a PhD in Glacial Geomorphology. 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 how she motivated a judge with no walking experience to complete an ascent of Kilimanjaro, 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. At the end of the episode, we spend a bit of time talking about Becky’s next expedition: she’s leading a 280km, camel-supported desert trek in Sudan. Find out more about Rebecca Coles here: https://www.instagram.com/roam.mtns/ Rebecca’s piece in Sidetracked about her first ascent of Lasarmula: https://www.sidetracked.com/a-mountain-affair/ The UIAA: https://theuiaa.org/ Rob Johnson, filmmaker: https://www.instagram.com/filmuphigh/?hl=en

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. I happened to speak to Franco on his very first day as a fully professional climber, so we also speak about the socio-economic barriers to going professional, the possible effects of social media on the process, and why you’re probably doing it wrong if you enjoy doing promotion too much. There are also bits about castles in Northumberland, about how the pupils Franco used to teach didn’t know he was also a climber, about Franco’s enthusiasm for climbers who aren’t from the normal climbing areas, and – right at the end – a bit about a play Franco started to write while at university in Manchester. unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are unfinished, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag.

unfinishing is the podcast about projects that are unfinished, abandoned, or not public. It’s presented by Emily Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Instagram @unfinishingpod or on Twitter  @TrueBagglerag. In this special episode, unfinishing went on the road to Kendal Mountain Festival 2022. I interviewed a lovely bunch of contributors and visitors to the festival about projects they haven’t finished. I’ve collected some of the interviews together to give you a flavour of the festival and of the extraordinary people who attend. The first interview you’ll hear is with 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. I speak to Jenny Tough, who’s 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. I also talk to Charlie Smith, who’s become an expert in cold-weather expeditions, because he’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. My other interviewees are: Siobhan Daniels, author of Retirement Rebel, who has an inspiring message about encouraging women to not be afraid of aging. Andy Dodd, from the fabulous charity Climbers Against Cancer. Amy Hogg, a climbing instructor whose ADHD means she doesn’t always finish things immediately, but who’s able to transfer her determination to finish to those she climbs with. Coline Payne, who was inspired by Mike Carter's One Man and His Bike to cycle all the way around the coast of the UK.

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. (The highlights are a Geordie sci-fi novel, a story about humans having wings, and a story about what might happen if a porn site sponsored space exploration.) Towards the end of the episode there’s also an excellent anecdote about a time Lewis went to a poetry night in disguise and then ran into a work colleague. Find out more about Durham Spray Paints here: www.durhamspraypaints.com, on Facebook here, and on Instagram here. Lewis's Epic TV episode is here, and the buildering map is here. --- unfinishing is presented by Em Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Twitter @TrueBagglerag, or find Em on Instagram @thebagglerag.

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. (The highlights are a Geordie sci-fi novel, a story about humans having wings, and a story about what might happen if a porn site sponsored space exploration.) Towards the end of the episode there’s also an excellent anecdote about a time Lewis went to a poetry night in disguise and then ran into a work colleague. Find out more about Durham Spray Paints here: www.durhamspraypaints.com, on Facebook here, https://www.facebook.com/DurhamSprayPaints/?ref=page_internal, and on Instagram here https://www.instagram.com/durhamspraypaints/?hl=en.  Lewis's Epic TV episode is here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EIQ7RakpsHw and the buildering map is here. --- unfinishing is presented by Em Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], contact Em on Twitter @TrueBagglerag, or find Em on Instagram @thebagglerag.

unfinishing celebrates projects that never got finished, that have yet to be finished, or that never made it out into the world. I ask my guests to search their memories to rediscover and enjoy secret and incomplete schemes. My guest in this episode is Anna Fleming, who 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). More information about Helen Mort’s A Line Above the Sky can be found here: A Line Above the Sky (penguin.co.uk) More information about Faye Latham’s British Mountaineers is available here: https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/literature/between_the_lines_of_british_mountaineers_-_climbing_erasure_poetry-14319 You can find out about Faye’s event at Kendal Mountain Festival here: Faye Latham - British Mountaineers (kendalmountainfestival.com) And if you’re intrigued by Joe Simpson and Touching the Void, follow this link: Touching the Void (2003) - IMDb --- unfinishing is presented by Em Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], or contact Em on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

NEXT EPISODE OUT SUNDAY 14 AUGUST - WITH ANNA FLEMING 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). More information about Helen Mort’s A Line Above the Sky can be found here: A Line Above the Sky (penguin.co.uk) More information about Faye Latham’s British Mountaineers is available here: https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/literature/between_the_lines_of_british_mountaineers_-_climbing_erasure_poetry-14319 You can find out about Faye’s event at Kendal Mountain Festival here: Faye Latham - British Mountaineers (kendalmountainfestival.com) And if you’re intrigued by Joe Simpson and Touching the Void, follow this link: Touching the Void (2003) - IMDb --- unfinishing is presented by Em Anderson and the artwork is by Graham Oakes. If you have an unfinished or private project you’d like to talk about, please email [email protected], or contact Em on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

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. Recent commissions include an identity for a new artist- and maker-led online store, Inland; a delightfully surprising ecom store for Australian fashion brand Song for the Mute; and a wayfinding system for an electric vehicle startup Arrival. Matt also collaborates with a previous guest on unfinishing, Rishi Dastidar. You can listen to the episode with Rishi here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson/episodes/with-Rishi-Dastidar--Postcards-for-strangers-e1fmh95 If you have an unfinished or unpublished project you'd like to talk about, please contact Em Anderson via email ([email protected]) or on Twitter: @TrueBagglerag. More details and a full list of episodes are available on my website: ecanderson.wordpress.com  For those who are interested, here are the links to various things I discuss with Matt: Low-tech magazine: http://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/ Killed by Google: killedbygoogle.com Raspberry Pi: http://raspberrypi.org/learn/

Graham Oakes 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. Graham also created the artwork for unfinishing and if you'd like to see some other examples of his work, you can find them here: @grahamoakesart If you have an unfinished or unpublished project you'd like to talk about, please contact Em Anderson via email ([email protected]) or on Twitter: @TrueBagglerag. More details and a full list of episodes are available on my website: ecanderson.wordpress.com  unfinishing celebrates creative projects that never got finished, that have yet to be finished, or that never made it out into the world. What’s the value to be found in unfinished and private writing, art, and music? What stops us from finishing things off? And what might happen if the pressure to complete projects disappeared? I ask my guests to search their bottom drawers and the corners of their laptops to rediscover secret and incomplete schemes. unfinishing is produced and presented by Em Anderson

My guest in the next episode of unfinishing is Graham Oakes, who 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 got upset about one of his YouTube videos. Graham also created the artwork for unfinishing and if you'd like to see some other examples of his work, you can find them here: @grahamoakesart If you have an unfinished or unpublished project you'd like to talk about, please contact Em Anderson via email ([email protected]) or on Twitter: @TrueBagglerag. More details and a full list of episodes are available on my website: ecanderson.wordpress.com  unfinishing celebrates creative projects that never got finished, that have yet to be finished, or that never made it out into the world. What’s the value to be found in unfinished and private writing, art, and music? What stops us from finishing things off? And what might happen if the pressure to complete projects disappeared? I ask my guests to search their bottom drawers and the corners of their laptops to rediscover secret and incomplete schemes. unfinishing is produced and presented by Em Anderson

Mark Antony Owen is a poet and publisher. He 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 If you have an unfinished or unpublished project you'd like to talk about, please contact Em Anderson via email ([email protected]) or on Twitter: @TrueBagglerag. unfinishing celebrates creative projects that never got finished, that have yet to be finished, or that never made it out into the world. What’s the value to be found in unfinished and private writing, art, and music? What stops us from finishing things off? And what might happen if the pressure to complete projects disappeared? I ask my guests to search their bottom drawers and the corners of their laptops to rediscover secret and incomplete schemes. unfinishing is produced and presented by Em Anderson The artwork for unfinishing was created by Graham Oakes

Sophie Taylor is a writer and visual artist. She 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. And some things we mention in the podcast: Star and Shadow Cinema: Star and Shadow Programme; The Paper (Good Press): The Paper – Good Press — good books & more If you have a project you never finished or never made public that you'd like to talk about, email [email protected] unfinishing celebrates creative projects that never got finished, that have yet to be finished, or that never made it out into the world. I ask my guests to search their bottom drawers and the corners of their laptops to rediscover secret and incomplete schemes. unfinishing is presented by Em Anderson (@TrueBagglerag). The artwork for unfinishing was created by Graham Oakes: https://www.instagram.com/grahamoakesart/

My guest is Rishi Dastidar, who 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.  unfinishing celebrates creative projects that never got finished, that have yet to be finished, or that never made it out into the world. I ask my guests to search their bottom drawers and the corners of their laptops to rediscover secret and incomplete schemes. If you have a project you never finished or never made public that you'd like to talk about, email [email protected]  unfinishing is presented by Em Anderson (@TrueBagglerag).  The artwork for unfinishing was created by Graham Oakes: https://www.instagram.com/grahamoakesart/

My guest this week is the historian Dr Peter Edwards. From a Polish-Welsh background, Pete was born in Liverpool and grew up in Birmingham. He studied history at the university of Leeds, where he also completed his PhD research. Pete is a brilliant teacher and has taught in a real variety of settings. These include: 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 currently works in admissions at the University of Leeds Doctoral College, but the role he had just before that is the role he’s here to talk about today – and it’s also his unfinished project. Pete took voluntary severance pay to leave Greenhead College in 2015, using the funds to establish his very own company, called Roundhouse History Tours. In the process he became one of less than 100 badged guides in the International Guild of Battlefield Guides. As you’ll hear in our conversation, Pete’s history tours took clients to an array of fascinating sites, from the European continent to Wales and northern England. I’m in the extremely fortunate position of having had Pete as my A-level history teacher. He’s one of those special teachers who stays with you forever. You’ll be able to see why when you hear the flair and enthusiasm that he has for his subject. (And when you hear the reassurance he’s able to convey even when talking about less than uplifting topics…) 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. ------ If you would like to be a guest on Series 2 of Unfinished/Unpublished, email me on [email protected], or catch me on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

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. --------------- There are just a couple of episodes left in Series 1 of Unfinished/Unpublished and I’m now recruiting for Series 2. If you have an unfinished or unpublished project you’d like to talk about, email me at [email protected]. (You can also contact me on Twitter @TrueBagglerag). So far I’ve interviewed writers, artists, musicians, historians, and gardeners – everyone’s welcome!

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 ------------- I’m now recruiting guests for Series 2 of Unfinished/Unpublished, so if you have a project that has yet to be completed or that hasn’t made it out into the world, contact me via email on [email protected]. You can also reach me on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

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. ---------- I’m now recuiting guests for Series 2 of Unfinished/Unpublished. So if you have an unfinished or unpublished project that you’d like to talk about, email me, Emily Anderson at [email protected]. You can also get in touch via Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

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. -------------- If you have an unfinished project you’d like to talk about, email me, Emily Anderson at [email protected]. You can also follow me on Twitter @TrueBagglerag.

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/ ....................... Subscribe to Unfinished/Unpublished on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/1ez2Ji4YEwBSm7uzpZ5nzC Subscribe on iTunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/unfinished-unpublished/id1546490983 Subscribe on other platforms here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson ....................... Unfinished/Unpublished celebrates creative projects that never got finished, that have yet to be finished, or that never made it out into the world. I ask my guests to search their bottom drawers and the abandoned corners of their laptops to rediscover secret and incomplete schemes. If you have an unfinished or unpublished project you’d like to talk about, email me at [email protected] Or, follow me on Twitter: @TrueBagglerag

Adam Smyth 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 Periclesfor 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, which you can find here: https://inscriptionjournal.com/how-to-buy/. ....................... Subscribe to Unfinished/Unpublished on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/1ez2Ji4YEwBSm7uzpZ5nzC Subscribe on iTunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/unfinished-unpublished/id1546490983 Subscribe on other platforms here: https://anchor.fm/em-anderson ....................... Unfinished/Unpublished celebrates creative projects that never got finished, that have yet to be finished, or that never made it out into the world. I ask my guests to search their bottom drawers and the abandoned corners of their laptops to rediscover secret and incomplete schemes. If you have an unfinished or unpublished project you’d like to talk about, email me at [email protected] Or, follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrueBagglerag

This week my guests are Amy and Iain, the hosts of the wonderful and very popular The Dark Material Podcast. 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). You can listen to The Dark Material Podcast here: https://www.darkmaterialpodcast.com/ ....................... Unfinished/Unpublished celebrates creative projects that never got finished, that have yet to be finished, or that never made it out into the world. I ask my guests to search their bottom drawers and the abandoned corners of their laptops to rediscover secret and incomplete schemes. If you have an unfinished or unpublished project you’d like to talk about, email me at [email protected] Or, follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrueBagglerag

This is a special, one-off recording in which four storytellers describe their experiences of coming to the UK as refugees and asylum seekers. I produced it 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. First broadcast 3rd 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. First broadcast 17 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. 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 this year’s 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. 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. 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.