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Glitterbug & A Finger in The Fishes Mouth at The garden Cinema

A special event to mark the re-publication by leading London independent press Prototype of a facsimile edition of Derek Jarman’s early, extremely rare and only poetry book A Finger in the Fishes Mouth, originally published in 1972.

Joining publisher Jess Chandler and editor Gareth Evans after the screening to talk about Jarman's poetry, life, legacy and ever-growing influence will be poet and writer CAConrad and scholar Declan Wiffen. The book will be on sale at the event. Thanks to James Mackay.

Heavily illustrated from Jarman’s collection of postcards, the book combines text and visual imagery in a way which foreshadows his subsequent style as an artist and filmmaker. With the vast majority of the first edition having been destroyed by Jarman, this makes available again a missing, significant piece of his oeuvre. The facsimile retains the book’s original format, with a silver mirror cover, and an image accompanying each poem, printed in a striking green ink. Additional material comes in the form of a Foreword and Afterwords by writer and organiser So Mayer, Jarman's biographer Tony Peake and his late companion Keith Collins.

A stunning collage of ecstatic Super-8 fragments, Glitterbug was assembled by friends from Jarman's prolific filming of everyday events and his experimental investigations of the format. Set to a mesmerizing score by Brian Eno, Glitterbug forms a hopeful counterpoint to Jarman's remarkable final film Blue and commemorates both Jarman’s exemplary life as a gay icon and his unique artistic vision.

The Coast is Queer - The Wonders of our Planet

A brilliant conversation I charied with Natasha Carthew, Mike Parker and Eloise Armary at The Coast is Queer 2024. We discussed rural poverty & the challenges of queer experience in non-urban areas; the lure of the pastoral idyll and how to resist & interrogate it; working class queer writers and disrupting traditional nature writing by embracing queer methodologies; art and activism, plus Natasha’s excellent question: ‘what the fuck is memoir?’

The empty seat represented all those who couldn’t attend or have their voices heard. A small but important gesture during the ongoing genocide in Gaza and war on Lebanon.

Cruising Nature: introduction to a reading strategy - Workshop for Bath Spa University

This workshop will introduce you to the practice of cruising as a mode of reading—with a focus on the environments you inhabit and the ecologies all around us.

Cruising nature is an attempt, a starting point, to think about methods of queering nature writing.

Reading from Fieldnotes at ZONING Publication launch at South London Gallery

The publication documents a series of writing workshops run by Fieldnotes across London in 2022. The workshops experimented with methods such as concrete poetry, psychogeography and frottage as means of mapping the urban landscape, creating systems of observation and notation.

On Sat 15 April, Declan Wiffen will be reading from ‘Three Cruising Texts’ his contribution to Fieldnotes Issue 3.

Launch of Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping at the LRB

Now published for the very first time, Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping(House Sparrow Press) is Derek Jarman’s only piece of narrative fiction. Somewhere between a fairytale, acid trip and road movie, the work lays the foundations for many of the themes and styles that characterise Jarman’s work in film, painting and design.

So Mayer, author of A Nazi Word for a Nazi Thing (Peninsula), was joined by writer Philip Hoare, Jarman scholar Declan Wiffen and artist Michael Ginsborg.

Cruising Nature workshop at Spike Island, Bristol

The Coast is Queer - Cruising Nature Workshop

Inhabit the environments, ecologies & landscapes you live in through the practice of wandering without specific goal; collecting experiences and scavenging for writing material from the worlds around you.

Thinking of cruising as that which cultivates an openness towards the world, we will build on the double meaning of this word—the action of walking/sailing/driving without specific destination & searching for sexual encounters—to ask what cruising the natural and non-human world might look like? What unexpected encounters might occur if we follow our desire into the unknown? How might this practice reorient us towards a dying planet?

Derek Jarman event at Small Wonder Festival at Charleston Farmhouse

In 1971, a young Derek Jarman wrote his first and only piece of narrative fiction, ‘Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping.’ The surreal, lyrical tale, which has remained unpublished until now, was described by the Turner Prize-nominated artist as ‘autobiographical although deeply buried’.

In this special event marking what would have been the artist, author and film-maker’s 80th year, hear original audio recordings of Jarman reading the story and join the book’s publisher Jess Chandler and author, director and friend of Jarman, Neil Bartlett in a fascinating discussion. Chairing the event is Jarman scholar Declan Wiffen.

Queerying The Channel

In 2023, Dr Trude Sundberg and Dr Jennifer Leigh are co-organising ‘Queerying the Channel’ workshop on the morning of 7th July at the Turner Contemporary in Margate. This is an interactive, creative workshop exploring our relationship to the ocean, its politics and cultural meanings. It invites participants to queery the channel’s visibility or invisibility in our work and daily lives, and explore our relationship with the channel in contemplative, creative and collaborative methods.

We live and work in close proximity to the channel but may not always explicitly contend with its presence in our lives, our political, socio-economic and cultural understandings of place, and the violence and resistance lived by those crossing this body of water.

I facillitated part of the workshop based on Cruising as methodology.

In conversation with Alison Rumfitt about her novel Tell Me I’m Worthless

Faversham Literary Festival

A new workshop ‘Cruising the Creek’ for Faversham Literary Festival 2022

Cruising The Estuary

This series of three workshops plays on the double meaning of cruising—sailing on water & searching for sexual encounters. Disrupting the idea that queer identities are ‘unnatural’, we will explore resonances and entanglements between queerness & estuaries. Thinking of cruising as that which cultivates an openness towards the world, we will also ask what cruising ‘nature’ could look like? What might happen if we wrote without a specific destination in mind? What unexpected encounters might occur if we follow our desire into the unknown?

The three workshops are:

1. Writing as Cruising: Introduction to a practice - 27 May: 6pm-8pm
2. Threshold Natures: Embracing the in-between - 3 June: 6pm-8pm
3. Queer Mudlarking: Searching for the hidden - 10 June: 6pm-8pm

An Estuary Reading Group

In 2021, a small group of us read Nicola Barker's Thames Gateway Trilogy, which consists of Wide Open, set on the Isle of Sheppey; Behindlings, which takes places on Canvey Island; and Darkmans, based in Ashford.

This reading group emerged out of a conversation between Caroline Millar and Declan Wiffen while wandering along the Saxon Shore Way discussing creative texts that responded to the Estuary. We decided a shared reading experience of Barker's novels would be an exciting and different place to begin thinking collectively about this environment.

It was part of Estuary Festival 2021.

lichencamp --------------- declan wiffen

new

06—on-going/strange feels 07—the undesirables

other

01—writing 02—cruising nature 03—fuck plants 04—gay gardens 05—feels writing retreats 08—indiscriminate lanking 09—scabious appreciation soc 10—university 11—past events12—mentoring, workshop, etc. 13—contact 14—other other stuff

^{lichencamp

---------------

declan wiffen}

^{06—on-going/strange feels

07—the undesirables}

^{01—writing

02—cruising nature

03—fuck plants}^{04—gay gardens

05—feels writing retreats

08—indiscriminate lanking

09—scabious appreciation soc

10—university

11—past events
12—mentoring, workshop, etc.
13—contact

14—other other stuff}