unfinishing

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 pr...

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...

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 cli...

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...

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 s...

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...

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 poet...

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 crea...

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...

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...

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 Fitzger...

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...

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 wo...

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 i...

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...

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...

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 experi...

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 20...

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 Part...

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 – an...

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...

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 rea...

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...