Dear: letter writing in shifting times

A purple envelope rests against a purple and white abstract background

Pod-Head: Therese Keogh

What if letters were process-oriented and place-based writing methods that could tend to the present realities and future imaginaries of a changing world?”

This pod is an experiment in collective letter writing practice! Together we will undertake a series of explorations into written strategies for responding to shared urgencies of the present. From love letters to open letters, we will dive into different narrative durations, thinking, talking and writing across time from our particular orientations and situatedness.

During our time together, we will try out:

  • Letter writing as writing
  • Letter writing as reading
  • Letter writing as listening
  • Letter writing as voicing
  • Letter writing as grounding
  • Letter writing as walking
  • Letter writing as hosting
  • Letter writing as making

This pod will be guided by key anticolonial, queer and feminist letter writing practices from artists, activists, researchers, and poets, whose writing works to rearrange worlds and reimagine what living together might look like. We will play, collect, test and tweak, working from a combination of found, shared, and fabricated letters to tease out process-oriented and place-based writing methods that tend to the present realities and future imaginaries of a changing world.

Therese Keogh

Black and white headshot of Therese in front of a large body of water, There is smiling and holding a coiled rope in their hands
image credit: Clare Britton

Therese Keogh is an artist and writer, born on Gunditjmara Country, and currently living on Awabakal Country. Therese works collaboratively through writing and research projects and is invested in collective imaginaries as a process of creating more just relations to lands, waters and people. Their collaborative work includes facilitating ‘Magnetic Topographies’ with Clare Britton and Kenzee Patterson—looking to collective pedagogies of place—and ‘Written Together’—a shared workshop for non-normative writing in arts research. Therese holds a BFA from Monash University, an MFA from Sydney College of the Arts, and an MA Geography from Queen Mary University of London. Therese is currently undertaking a PhD at Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. https://www.theresekeogh.com/