luka

Well-known member
My view of language is bound to my accidental and uncherished career as a copywriter. Poetry is going to help me escape it because it helps breed disgust for the vacuous mechanical language of advertising.

What have you leArned about how lAnguage is used in that field?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
What have you leArned about how lAnguage is used in that field?

Perhaps it's because I'm a shit copywriter but I see examples of it in advertising on the tube etc. - the love of the OBVIOUS going on FACILE

So e.g. puns, cliches, references everyone will understand, blokey, jokey colloquialism - '(Deliveroo) Not left the flat all day. Burger here in five? #Winning.'

I suppose it's a function of the intention being for anyone passing in the street to be able to understand the 'wit' involved

Or else it's the corporate-targeting variety where reassuring jargon words are packed together 'Built for excellence' or whatever... 'High performance. Low maintenance.'
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I mean luka if you're ever finding yourself hard up look into copywriting you'd find it a piece of piss and it can be absurdly well rewarded cos I'd say a good 8/10 people are actually unable to write ANYTHING.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
(Walking through an advertising agency in LONDON)

I wander on my market'd beat,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.

All sorts of literate, creative types, prostituting talent, in a Dantean circle with complimentary fussball table and barrist coffee
 

luka

Well-known member
I mean luka if you're ever finding yourself hard up look into copywriting you'd find it a piece of piss and it can be absurdly well rewarded cos I'd say a good 8/10 people are actually unable to write ANYTHING.

Ok I will keep that in mind although obviously I have zero qualifications leaving aside b in English GCSE
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
What reading Pound's essays has flagged up to me is

How CONTAGIOUS language is, and how you might feel OBLIGED to write in a 'poetic' vein because most of the poets who are seen as great did so

And with coypwriting there's the usual two way street - it's infected with the vibrancy of 'common' language, particularly youth cultural (or USES it, more accurately) and then infects the multitudes with the debased form of that language
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Yeah me too

I used to find when I made a really good friend I'd often start speaking like them for a week or two, presumably that still goes on, it all blends into one flexible repertoire
 

luka

Well-known member
Yeah, the merge. The membrane opening and partially integrating the other. A shared mind. A shared creating space. Use it while we can. The Stars turn and you might fall out of alignment. I'm just cutting something off right now as it happens. Get off my line freeloader. This channel is now closed.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
without a doubt it's the opportunity of a lifetime which puts us onto a roadmap to rewarding career.’
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
'Meet consumers at the speed of now.'

Here's a good example of copyspeak, luka

adverb becomes noun

let's reverse that

'Step inside the everywhere'

see?
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Colleague today said 'you know there's that guy on the south bank who writes you a poem' and I wondered if...
 

luka

Well-known member
Woops does it too but he's only part time. Always chasing girls, too busy to commit.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
DARK house, by which once more I stand
Here in the long unlovely street,
Doors, where my heart was used to beat
So quickly, waiting for a hand,

A hand that can be clasp’d no more—
Behold me, for I cannot sleep,
And like a guilty thing I creep
At earliest morning to the door.

He is not here; but far away
The noise of life begins again,
And ghastly thro’ the drizzling rain
On the bald street breaks the blank day.
 
Top