Steven Poole

Steven Poole (born in 1972) is a British author and journalist. He particularly concerns himself with the abuse of language and has written two books on the subject: Unspeak (2006) and Who Touched Base In My Thought Shower? (2013).

Poole studied English at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and has subsequently written for publications including The Independent, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Sunday Times, and the New Statesman. He has published two books and currently writes a weekly nonfiction book-review column in the Saturday Guardian called Et Cetera, as well as regular longer book reviews, plus a monthly column in Edge magazine. Poole was invited to deliver the opening keynote address at the 2006 Sydney Writers' Festival, and also gave a keynote at the 2008 Future and Reality of Gaming conference in Vienna.

Trigger Happy was published in 2000 by 4th Estate in the UK (with the subtitle "The Inner Life of Videogames") and by Arcade Publishing in the US (with the subtitle "Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution"). It is an investigation of the aesthetics of videogames, that notes similarities and differences with other artforms such as cinema, painting and literature, and finally offers a description of games as semiotic systems that may provoke "aesthetic wonder". In 2007, Poole released a PDF version of the book for free download on his website, calling it an "experiment" in the tip-jar model for writers. In 2013 collection of Poole's Edge columns was published as "Trigger Happy 2.0".

Unspeak was published in 2006 by Little, Brown in the UK, and by Grove Press in the US. The second UK edition (2007) has the subtitle "Words Are Weapons". It is a book about language in contemporary politics, structured around buzzphrases such as "community", climate change/global warming, and "war on terror". The book was shortlisted for Index on Censorship's T.R. Fyvel Award in 2006. According to the author, "unspeak" is related to framing: it is a rhetorical way of naming an issue so as to avoid having to argue one's position, and to render the opposing position inexpressible.Unspeak received a hostile review in the Guardian from former British government communications chief Alastair Campbell, who wrote: "I am not quite sure what Poole is trying to say." Since publication of the book, the author has continued to discuss new examples of unspeak at the book's dedicated blog.

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