Activist and artist, painter and plantsman, Derek Jarman was a key alternative and cultural figure of the last century. Amidst his lifetime’s work is the newly published Through The Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping, an opulently surrealist piece of narrative fiction, the only of its kind known to have been written by Jarman.
Penned in 1971, the story is a fantastical reflection of Jarman’s own early visits to North America. Beautifully and poetically layered in the vein of Jarman’s art, it follows the journey of a young blind King, Amethyst, and his valet, John, in a narrative that queers the narrative of travelling stories through details of their relationship with nods to other significant queer mid-century art, such as David Hockney’s We Two Boys Together Clinging and his pool paintings.
Though not Jarman’s most extensive work in length, it is replete with themes and leitmotifs that would reappear throughout his life; colour, for example, used to vividly depict the Billboard Promised Land itself, would form the basis of Jarman’s book Chroma and film Blue, both produced in the last years of his life as he grappled with sight loss as a result of AIDS.
This is a gift of an edition with preceding and closing essays from a close friend of Jarman and a scholar of his, who pore over his creative signature and the individual behind one of the most significant creative figures of 20th-century Britain.
Through The Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping, Derek Jarman (House Sparrow)
Price: £9.99. Info: here
words CHLOË EDWARDS
Want more books?
The latest reviews, interviews, features and more, from Wales and beyond.