A Finger in the Fishes Mouth
by Derek Jarman
with Keith Collins, So Mayer & Tony Peake
A facsimile edition of Derek Jarman’s sole, early, extremely rare poetry book A Finger in the Fishes Mouth, originally published in 1972.
Heavily illustrated from Jarman’s collection of postcards, the book combines text and visual imagery in a way which foreshadows his subsequent style as an artist and filmmaker. With the majority of the first edition having been destroyed by Jarman, this makes available again a missing, significant piece of his oeuvre.
The original reissue was published in close collaboration with Jarman’s biographer Tony Peake, and his long-time companion Keith Collins, who oversaw Jarman’s legacy and estate until his sudden death in 2018 after a short illness.
The facsimile retains the book’s original format and size, with a silver mirror cover, and an image accompanying each poem, printed in a striking green ink.
Additional material comes in the form of a Foreword and Afterwords by So Mayer, Tony Peake and Keith Collins.
Test Centre, co-run by House Sparrow Press publisher Jess Chandler, originally published a sold-out facsimile edition in 2014. House Sparrow Press are reissuing the book following the success of the 2022 publication of Jarman’s only narrative prose work, Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping. Part of the title of that story appears on the back cover of A Finger of Fishes Mouth in Jarman’s handwriting, and the two works are closely interlinked.
Formed in 2016 to publish A Sparrow’s Journey, House Sparrow Press is, in the best and multiple senses of the word (it is hoped) an ‘occasional’ venture. Based in Hackney, London, it seeks to publish creatively committed, collaborative works both at a time that is relevant and for reasons that feel compelling. It is drawn to manuscripts of hybridity, titles that might elude conventional publication over concerns of form or scale. It also believes in a modesty of style (but never of ambition) and a fecundity of ideas. Its moniker (drawn from its first venture) celebrates a creature that was once ubiquitous and yet is now threatened. The idea of a bird inhabiting and inspiring a place of residence also feels resonant. This is what the best books do too. There are wings at work here. In short, Emily Dickinson was right (again) when she observed that ‘hope is the thing with feathers’.
House Sparrow Press comprises Jess Chandler (Publisher and Editor) and Gareth Evans (Editor).