Learning to Draw / A History

Learning to Draw / A History is an evolving and transformative narrative sketch, alternately prose and poetry, that serves to document a personal and yet collective history with a roving artist's eye. Previously serialised in a number of small journals and zines, the work has met with some acclaim and this is the first complete version in a new architectural alignment. Although from post-war Britain, Basil King's literary lineage harkens back to the projective verse style of Pound and Williams, sweetened through his working associations with the likes of Blackburn, Ginsberg and Baraka. The weaving of subjects in this work is not unlike the purposeful mixing of colours on an artist's palette.

'The poems, rather than acting as an extended narrative (which is what I'd at first assumed they would do) interlace, so that the structure is like an evolving web. What is at stake here is a history, but history being a fluid thing, is never going to appear the same no matter how often the survivors tell their tales. With each new piece of information the whole is altered: not just by addition, but by complication.' - Laurie Duggan