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https://theconversation.com/property-poetry-real-estate-ads-and-literature-have-more-in-common-than-you-might-think-214835>
"A few years ago, I turned some real estate advertisements into poems by adding
line breaks:
Fantastic views of the beach, ocean,
headland and hinterland,
you can see the Haven,
you look straight up
the green grass of the Skillion
I was interested, among other things, in asking what happens when we compare
the language of real estate copy with more obvious forms of poetry.
If you read a real estate ad with the same attention you might bestow on a poem
you can observe how it deploys metre, metaphor, and the tropes of landscape
poetry. You can note how some advertisements directly reference the sublime or
the picturesque, and how others open with a rhyming couplet.
Australian poet Lucy Van characterises real estate copy as a form of poetry. No
other poetry, she observes,
is more familiar to the Australian reading audience, more widely read and
better understood, not only for what is said but importantly for what is not
said, than the 150-200 word copy that flogs real estate.
Like other paid work involving some form of writing, real estate copywriting,
or what Van calls “property poetry,” is a job that has attracted writers of
literature. I know at least one Australian creative writer who has worked in
this industry.
Courses on writing real estate advertisements are run by the Australian
Writers’ Centre: pitched at “a writer with a passion for property or an agent
looking to hone your ad writing skills.” A key learning outcome of such a
course is developing the ability to “add value,” or push up the price of the
property through your description of it.
The literary nature of real estate copy raises several larger questions. What
is the relationship between writing and ownership of land? What is the history
of writers “adding value” to landed property? How does literature normalise and
respond to the inequities of private property in Australia?"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
