Author: Derek Jarman
Publisher: House Sparrow Press
Paperback
Staff Pick! So says...
A luminous novella brief and bright as a shooting star. In 1972, Derek Jarman published his first and only poetry collection (A Finger in the Fishes Mouth, available from Prototype) with the phrase Through the Billboard… on its back cover. In the same year, he wrote this extended journey narrative - let’s call it a trip, in all senses - but never published it. Declan Wiffen’s deep-dive poetic afterword, along with Philip Hoare’s elegant foreword, a biographical sketch by Jarman’s friend and housemate Michael Ginsborg, and an impassioned final note by publisher Gareth Evans add layers to this labour of love, a postcard from the wild and technicolor edges of American culture that seared into Jarman’s brain.