Next Tuesday night at 7pm UK time (check your local time here), I’ll be going live here on The Clearing with to talk about Modern Nature. Do join us if you can - but fear not if you can’t make it; a replay will be available soon after!
You can access the event using this link.
Hope to see you there!
It’s Week 2 of our Modern Nature readalong. How are you getting on?
Derek’s garden is taking shape. An endless succession of seeds are being planted, and there’s a stark contrast between his London life of parties and adulation, and his quiet Dungeness routines. He’s ruminating over his early life, remembering sexual and artistic awakenings. Mostly, he seems robustly well, but every now and then, exhaustion overtakes him: ‘Today I can hardly lift the knife to butter my toast,’ he writes on 29th August. ‘At breakfast I drink gallons of hot weak tea and feel sorry for myself.’ And yet even in his darkest moments, his eye is always drawn back to the landscape that holds him: the wild jade sea, the vast sky, the wind and the rain.
Jarman makes frequent reference to various apothecary’s ‘herbals’ - historic guides to medicinal plants - in his diaries, noting the benefits of each new herb he adds to his garden or wild flower he finds in the shingle of the Ness. They are fascinating texts and often very beautiful texts to explore, and I found many copies in his bookshelves when I spent some time in the house last week. For anyone curious to explore these further, there’s a great list of online editions here.
If you’d like to picture the interior of Prospect Cottage a little more clearly as you read, there’s an excellent BBC Arena documentary from 1991 - shortly after these diaries end - available to view here. The house hasn’t changed very much since then, and it’s fascinating to hear Derek himself speaking about it. (Also, British readers: do you get a twinge of geek nostalgia at the opening credits with the bottle floating on the water? Or was I the only teenager who watched arts documentaries in my spare time?).
Anyway - over to you. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts about Modern Nature so far!
Take care,
Katherine