Dear reader, I am writing this to you from a wedding of one of my oldest friends. As such, it will be short.

You will probably have seen this explode over your tweet feed, but there is an incredible interview with Chelsey Minnis. Emily Berry discusses the ins and outs of Chelsey’s work here.

There is a particularly good reading of Propositions — a poem built out of overheard lines from trashy old movies of a certain era. The reading starts at 1:37 and includes wonderful lines like

“it’s either a rowboat proposal or a murder”

and

“Now, I am going to tell a very long, very dirty joke,
this could be hard on your pocketbook”

and

“You do the praying and I’ll handle the dice”

The way that each line has some striking demand of another, which says less about the other than the person speaking — which I suppose is all speaking — is the proposition, every one of them has a demand of possession in them. There’s no proposal without saying “hey, here, let us cost each other a great deal”.

Also have a taste of some older work by Chelsey, in Granta.

This week’s song is Seasons, again.

Thanks for reading Etch To Their Own. I need to go back to a party ❤