House Sparrow Press is to reissue the late film director Derek Jarman’s only poetry collection A Finger in the Fishes Mouth.
Publisher Jess Chandler acquired world rights from The Keith Collins Memorial Will Trust, care of Felicity Bryan Associates. Originally published in 1972 by Bettiscombe Press, the reissued edition will be published in November 2024 with forewords and afterwords by So Mayer, Tony Peake and Keith Collins.
A Finger in the Fishes Mouth is “heavily illustrated” with Jarman’s collection of postcards. and will retain the original size and format of the first edition with a silver mirror cover.
Co-publishers Chandler and Gareth Evans said: “We have been hoping for years to make this poetry collection available again, with the wider distribution and circulation it deserves. For Jarman fans and collectors, this is a crucial, missing piece of his oeuvre, which reveals so much about his poetic sensibility, his interest in the resonances between image and text, and the development of his style as both a writer and artist. It’s a great privilege to have the opportunity to reissue this beautiful book.’”
