Review by Tracey Foster of "Modern Nature" by Derek Jarman

There’s an omnipresent overseer throughout Jarman’s Modern Nature. It manifests in different forms as he switches from daily records of the garden at Prospect Cottage, to a memoir of his childhood and life as a film producer - from the looming presence of Dungeness power station, felt through the thickest fog as his home faced ravaging seas, to the oppressive rule of the teachers at boarding school, ever vigilant for deviant behaviour.

Covering a period from the beginning of 1989 through to September the following year, he begins with the great storm that plunged the cottage into darkness, leaving him with only the beam of the lighthouse to see by. As he watches timbers fly from fishermen’s cottages and hears the wind cry like a banshee around him, he takes us back to Kansas and his nightmare dreams of Oz: "The Wizard of Oz reminds me of the frightening power of movies to move. I’m glad it had a happy ending."

The great city of Emerald, lit up like Dungeness station, is another presence that overshadows the narrative - a hint that we don’t always get what we truly wish for. 

Jarman bought Prospect with his father’s inheritance and moved there when his HIV status became public. The memoir is very poignant as he turned to face his death. Many of his friends had already succumbed to this vicious disease and he must have known that his time was running out as he built a garden in a savage microclimate. Many plants died, succumbed to the salt sprays, turned black and calcified. The temperatures could swing from intense dry heat to bitter blasts, but he persisted and replanted after every storm, gathering stones thrown up by the surges to decorate his patch.  A keen gardener and wide reader, he knew his plants and makes references to their mythical past, cultural symbolism, and power to heal. The prose is beautiful and melancholic: "Today, Dungeness glowed under a pewter sky – shimmering emeralds, arsenic, sap, sage and Verdigris greens washed bright, moss in little islands set off against pink pebbles, glowing yellow banks of gorse, the deep russet of dead bracken, and pale ochre of reeds in clumps set against the willow spinney."

This symphony of colour, intense like no other landscape, is filmic and harks back to the technicolour washes of Oz. A film-maker throughout, he sets scene after scene for us and is mindful of our reaction. During this period of writing, he was also filming War Requiem and includes the scene of poppies from the garden, buzzing with bees.

          Scarlet Poppies
          This is a Poppy
          A flower of cornfield and wasteland
          Bloody red
          Sepals Two
          Soon falling
          Petals four
          Stamens many
          Stigma rayed
          Many seeded
          For sprinkling on bread
          The staff of life
          Woven in wreaths
          In memory of the dead
          Bringer of dreams
          And sweet forgetfulness. 

I can clearly remember the towering black obelisk of 1980s public information films, warning us about the AIDS epidemic. A newly-qualified teacher at the time, I was working under the shadow of Section 28 which forbade schools from "promoting the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship." Jarman’s experience of the prejudices and persecution he faced during this period whilst watching his friends "shrivel and parch like the landscape" is harrowing. From his refuge at Prospect, the nature is encompassing and assuaging but also a grim reminder that our time in the garden is finite. The debris he collects from the shores after high tides is dragged back and used to create a sculpture garden of decay, where distorted metal hums to the sound of bees - inspiring him to paint and write.

          No dragons will spring from these circles.
          These stones will not dance or clap hands at the solstice.
          Beached on the shingle,
          They lock up their memories,
          Upright as sentinels
          In the dry grass.

Name dropping throughout his close contacts and work diary, this book will appeal to anyone who is interested in media of the period, but it is the plants who steal the show. It is they he turned to at the end of his day and Prospect Cottage that was his refuge at the end of his life.

About the reviewer

Tracey Foster started off in a long career as an Art and Design teacher but wanted to refocus her creative energies into writing poetry and prose. After helping others find inspiration in the world around us, she took an MA course in Creative Writing at Leicester University and has not looked back. She finds inspiration in the past and the events that shape us. Previous work has been published by Comma Press, Ayaskala, Alternateroute, Fish Barrel Review, Mausoleum Press, Bus Poetry Magazine and The Arts Council.

Marianne Eloise, interviewed by Jonathan Taylor

Marianne Eloise is a Brighton-based MA Film Studies graduate with a BA in Creative Writing and Film Studies. She is a writer with a focus in film criticism and taste cultures who currently works in the media but has been a poet for several years. She also runs www.februarystationery.com and www.februaryfilmandtv.com and writes across a few mediums, including academic, poetry, prose, and journalism. Her work can be found across several websites and publications. When Marianne is not working she can be found reading, watching films, or by the sea. Her recently-published poetry collection is called Cactus.

JT: Given that your collection, Cactus, is subtitled "a collection of poems about place," I was wondering What, in particular, draws you to write about places and the idea of place?

ME: I think that I have always recognised a correlation between my environment and wellbeing. I grew up believing that the reason for my unhappiness was where I lived, and that were I to get out I would be happier. I was also fascinated by the detail in every new place I went, and became obsessed with moving to Brighton and visiting California. After I have been somewhere I feel the need to commit the experience to paper so I can’t forget it. When I moved away I started to really think about the details of my hometown and that this might be interesting to a reader, no matter how mundane or grim. I also think that our environment has a monumental effect on our wellbeing in any case, and every new place I visit is representative to me of just how far I have come from my hometown and my own misery.

JT: In one of your poems you write that "I have never truly left anywhere." Could you say a bit more about this?

ME: The poem is in part inspired by this line from a Lemony Snicket book: "What happens in a certain place can stain your feelings for that location, just as ink can stain a white sheet.” So in that poem and that line I was saying that I am so affected by place and what has happened somewhere that it always stays with me – wherever I go I carry the weight of what happened there, and no matter how long I have been gone my presence there is never completely erased. Even though I am in Brighton now, I am thinking constantly of the people I left behind at home and looking for new ways to get out and head back to California. 

JT: What kinds of poetry and poets most inspire or engage you?

ME: This is hard because while I do try to read poetry and have some poets I enjoy, such as Walt Whitman and Sylvia Plath, I take the majority of my inspiration from music and literature. With regards to my writing on place, I take a lot from Pulp and the way Jarvis Cocker writes about his hometown in Sheffield – he has said that he couldn’t really see it until he left. His commitment to writing about the smallest, darkest detail of his life in Sheffield is something that I aspire to. I also love the way that music makes words much more accessible in a way that poetry never can.

JT: Do you have an ideal reader in mind when you write? Who is the book for?

ME: I try to write in a way that is accessible even for readers who don’t usually enjoy poetry – I want to reach people who have felt the way that I have, but who might not want to read more convoluted works. I also write for people I know, in the hope that they will understand me a little more and perhaps resent me a little less for leaving the way that I did. I dedicated my book to my friends all over the world and I mean that – I would not be where I am without their support. However as I have had a poetry blog for 3 years, I would say the book is for my readers – that they can have something of mine to hold and enjoy.

JT: In the wonderful title poem called "Cactus," you write "I couldn't call myself a flower / nor a tree, yet I am so inextricably / linked to my environment / affected by the sun I receive." How do you conceptualise the relationship, in your poetry, between the narrator ("I") and the environment?

ME: I have found that as well as my relationship to a place being dictated by the people and my experiences there, I also struggle greatly with the cold and dark. As the months get warmer I am a lot happier and I find living in my own skin much easier. I thrive in a California heat, a dry environment with little rain and a lot of sunshine – hence, I see myself as a cactus. I named the book Cactus after this idea, that the narrator is a cactus and the relationship to place depends directly on how much sun and rain they receive. A cactus would not suit a wet, England winter and nor do I a lot of the time!

JT: What's your intention with the poetry collection? What are your longer term aims for your poetry?

ME: I have been writing poetry for years and have literally hundreds of poems backlogged. Some of them have been published, but I wanted to put them in a collection that I and my readers could hold, while having complete creative control over the editing and artwork. I would like to continue publishing poetry and ultimately I want to reach a wider audience, publish a larger collection, and possibly work with other writers in the future.

JT: What does poetry mean to you? Why do you write it?

ME: Poetry for me is as much a coping mechanism as anything else – I write poetry because it’s a way of expressing myself without being entirely straightforward. I like how I don’t have to be as honest as I do in diary entries or memoir but I can still say what I want to. It helps me to work through what I am thinking or feeling on my own without talking to anyone. I have always loved writing but I enjoy poetry over other forms because it is so lyrical and often easy to write and read. 

About the reviewer
Jonathan Taylor is an author, lecturer, critic and editor. His books include the novels Melissa (Salt, 2015) and Entertaining Strangers (Salt, 2012), the memoir Take Me Home (Granta, 2007), and the poetry collection Musicolepsy (Shoestring, 2013). He is Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Leicester. His website is www.jonathanptaylor.co.uk.