Events at the Shop
Iain Sinclair - Edge of the Orison
Tuesday 18 October 2005
Iain Sinclair’s Edge of the Orison retraces the poet John Clare’s Journey out of Essex. His event at the London Review Bookshop interspersed readings from the book with anecdotes and digressions on its composition, before a generous audience Q&A session covering both Edge of the Orison and his other work.
Epping Forest and a Farewell to Middle England
Listen now (12:28)
Sinclair outlines the background to Edge of the Orison in London Orbital, and explains his attraction to the “drama of this walk”, connecting London with his wife’s family history. He begins by reading from the first passage of the book, describing his last day’s walk to Glinton through emptiness.
Reconfiguring London
Listen now (12:34)
Sinclair talks about the experience of arriving in Clare’s old village, a “piece of captured landscape” at the edge of Peterborough. He considers the effect on Clare of being “reinvented as someone else” through publication, before reading again passages from the book, describing Clare’s three London visits.
The Wilds of Northampton
Listen now (10:40)
Sinclair continues the story of his walk with his wife. Accommodation comedies near Stevenage give way to the “haunted and curious spot” of Whittlesey Mere, where stones intended for Ely Cathedral in the 12th century were discovered when the Mere was drained. Moving on to Northampton, Sinclair reads an episode describing his “salutary” first bookshop event in the town, under the auspices of the novelist Alan Moore.
The Whittlesey Straw Bear
Listen now (8:06)
Sinclair muses on a distant connection to Beckett discovered while researching in the asylum in Northampton, and describes how the “loose ends resolve themselves” in a voyage by narrowboat to Peterborough. He concludes his readings from the book with a section on the Whittlesey Straw Bear Festival – “Worzel Gummidge brought to life, tamed for the juvenile market”.
Audience Questions: Romanticism and Edge of the Orison
Listen now (15:01)
Audience questions open with Sinclair’s Romanticism, molly gangs, the book’s title, and the parallels between 18th century enclosure and modern-day property ownership.
Audience Questions: Other Work
Listen now (16:36)
Audience questions continue with Sinclair’s changing atttitudes to Keats, his experiences with security in the Thames Estuary, where he gets his ideas and information from, the concept of his books as “outtakes” from his research, and the importance of independent bookshops in supporting offbeat books and countering “the deadening effect of this unification of culture”.
Recorded and edited by Adrian Leibowitz and Brett Wilson
Common Custom:documentary & archive
Iain Sinclair’s books include Downriver, Lights out for the Territory and London Orbital. Most recently he edited the anthology London, City of Disappearances. Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, a documentary fiction, will be published next year.
Further Reading
If you enjoyed this event, you may also be interested in:
David Hare - Obedience, Struggle and Revolt