Mothlight was released on the 7th of February and I’ve been going on about it on social media quite heavily. In spite of this, I wanted to post a quick update about the book and then generally leave the discussions surrounding it to official events and to other websites. The guys at Influx Press (Gary Budden, Kit Caless and Sanya Semakula) have been wonderful and … Continue reading Mothlight
Above is a short film made with Influx Press all about my next book, Mothlight. Running back and forth between London and Merseyside, the film features me waffling on a little and also revisiting the original locations up north that inspired the book. Also featured, for which I’m incredibly lucky, are some readings by my previous voice-over collaborator Paul Carmichael who lends his rich tones … Continue reading Mothlight (Film)
I’m very happy to say that my first fiction book has been taken by the wonderful guys at Influx Press. Mothlight is due to be released on the 7th of February 2019. I’ve spoken publically a few times about this book in the earlier stages of its writing and editing under its original title of “A Hauntography” but, with its new name (a nod towards … Continue reading Mothlight (Influx Press, 2019)
I was sat on a couch in Strasbourg reading essays by Teju Cole, the volume Known And Strange Things published quite recently by Faber and Faber. It was night and I was alone, glancing up occasionally, as I often do when in my partner’s flat, to stare at the city’s famous cathedral lit up at night. I was at the point of the book when Cole … Continue reading Phantom Coincidence in W.G. Sebald’s “Remembered Triptych…”
I savour Robert Walser’s fragmentary work. Though I’ve read several volumes of his collected sketches, I’ve yet to read any of his full length novels. I have some trepidation about them, almost definitely unfounded, in that it is the formal qualities of such short snippets that draws me into his optimistic depression, his meandering playfulness and his utter enchantment with the everyday. A particular favourite … Continue reading Wandering Through – Robert Walser’s A Little Ramble (1914)
For a recent symposium on Hauntology, I gave a paper on the links between the philosophy of hauntological ideas with the work and W.G. Sebald. The subject had been interesting me for a while, not least because the jump between the style of the former and the thematic ideas of the latter are the amalgamation that I’m currently aiming for in my own fiction writing. … Continue reading Interview: Grant Gee + James Leyland Kirby (The Caretaker) on W.G. Sebald + Hauntology
So much has been written about W.G. Sebald and the use of photographs in his novels that it seems almost fruitless to write further around the subject. With it being one of the defining features of his work, and with a rapidly increasing library of volumes and handbooks exploring the writer’s legacy, I struggled to initially frame the subject I want to write about here: … Continue reading Chasing The Ghost – Excavating Sebald’s Portraits
This paper was delivered at the Resonant Edge Hauntology Symposium on the 15/06/2017. Full interviews with Grant Gee and James Leyland Kirby will be published later this summer. My talk today is about two specific forms: the writing of W.G. Sebald and the musical work of The Caretaker. My aim is to show the links between the two, with reference to ideas of Hauntology but … Continue reading Memory and Disintegration in the work of W.G. Sebald and The Caretaker
On finishing W.G. Sebald’s four quartered documentary piece, The Emigrants (1992), I felt as if a loose connection to some recent film or book was hanging midair, waiting to be tied up. The narrative is split into the stories of four émigrés, all seemingly interconnected by a multitude of strange images but chiefly connected by their fleeing from the rise of Nazi Germany to both … Continue reading Ghosts In The Ice: The Emigrants (W.G. Sebald) and 45 Years (Andrew Haigh).
Celluloid Wicker Man 