Episode 6 – Searching for Blue: Maggie Nelson’s Bluets [Radical Writing Podcast]

Kemp, Sam, Walker, Deborah and Ola Dimeji, Dewale (2025) Episode 6 – Searching for Blue: Maggie Nelson’s Bluets [Radical Writing Podcast]. [Audio]

Abstract

Have you ever fallen in love with a colour? Join me and writers Deborah Walker and Dewale Ola Dimeji as we talk obsession, heartbreak and form in Bluets, a genre-defining lyric essay by Maggie Nelson. It consists of a series of 240 numbered fragments, ranging from as short as a single sentence to a whole page, and it touches on themes of desire, depression, heartache and God. Its main interest is in searching for the cultural, artistic and synaesthetic qualities of the color blue, but it does so through lucid and elegant reflections on sex and love. Its prose-poetry form has made it an iconic text which has shaped the modern lyric essay genre, and it was first published in the UK in 2017 by Jonathan Cape.

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