‘Shopping List’

Abstract

Are the unnamed characters who write and respond to these post-it notes flatmates or lovers, friends or acquaintances? Is their relationship as fractious as this prose suggests, or does each note hold something deeper, a series of signs and indicators that gradually reveal affection between the two characters? The medium, somewhat outdated in our digital world, suggests fleeting exchanges, ships that pass in the night, all the while signalling shared space, shared responsibilities and shared lives. The implied story is as complex as the reader wants to make it, as the authors themselves use this brief epistolary form as a prompt for contemplating the mundanity of relationships, the emotional manoeuvring, assumed subtexts and back-stories of each and every moment or event. The authors are a novelist and a poet, writers each involved in their own relationships, colleagues interested in collaboration and new forms. Who is the third voice (or third and fourth voices) this dialogue has created? The story has led Lilwall and Loydell to writing the unexpected, responding to each other’s prose and shopping items in turn, surprising each other and themselves, before refining and editing the work together.