Frances Presley

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Biographical note:  Frances Presley was born in Derbyshire, and grew up in Lincolnshire and Somerset. She lives in a housing cooperative in north London, and the local fashion trade was the subject of her collaboration with the artist Irma Irsara, Automatic cross stitch (Other Press, 2000). She has also collaborated with the poet Elizabeth James in an email text and performance (Neither the One nor the Other, Form Books, 1999). She has written about her poetic practice and that of other British women poets, and is on the editorial board of How2. Her most recent sequence, Paravane, began with How2 communications post 9/11. This book brings together much of her new and published work since Linocut (Oasis, 1997).

BIC Basic

EAN13:  9781844710423
ISBN-10:  1844710424
ISBN-13:  9781844710423
Author:  Frances Presley
Title:  Paravane
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BC
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Mar-04
Extent:  140pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  140 mm
Thickness:  8 mm
Weight:  210 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  IP
Price:  GBP 10.99
Price:  USD 16.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  This book contains a long, new sequence of poems and prose by Frances Presley, as well as a selection of her work since 1996. It provides an important opportunity to see her recent work as a whole, and to appreciate how different sequences interrelate and develop, both in form and theme. Paravane includes ‘Private writing: Vermont journal 1996’, originally published with drawings by Peterjon Skelt, and the important email collaboration with Elizabeth James: ‘Neither the One nor the Other’. There are also extracts from ‘automatic cross stitch’, an innovative collaboration with the artist Irma Irsara focused on dress and fashion; and from the recently published ‘Somerset letters’, which uses experimental prose to explore layers of landscape, language and love. There are two new sections of previously uncollected work. The first ‘Uncollect’ brings together some shorter new poems, including two responses to the work of the installation artist Jane Prophet. Paravane is also the title of a major new sequence, which is a response to the tragedy of 9/11 in New York through various experiments in sound and image. Paravane centres on a walk around the City of London where IRA bombs were detonated, exploring and constructing sites of resistance and dissent. There is a renarration of the legend of Saint Barbara, patron of architects, and other female saints are evoked and reinvented. The unfolding ‘war on terrorism’ and New Labour modernization are spun through and out of the sequence. Sites of resistance are also found outside the city, especially on the high fells in the far north of England. The sequence ends provisionally in Mother Julian’s cell in Norwich, where the walls are porous and a new flame ignites a plastic language.

Meet the author

Podcasts

Play Paravane (546 KB)


Play Paravane day (1.2 MB)


Play Ground O (900 KB)


Play 9/2 (2.2 MB)


Play Stonenest Street (840 KB)


Play 11/9 (1.6 MB)


Play Fluid Canvas (1.6 MB)


Play first flame (1.1 MB)

Table of contents:
Paravane
Uncollect
from Somerset Letters
from automatic cross stitch
Neither the One nor the Other
Private writings

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Excerpt from book:  

Paravane day
for Mary Herivel

gather into the chariot bearing
sing low sweet
parabola in time high emptied windows

way to go
way to go home

or does this show
our ‘general direction of travel’ ?
(new set of overheads)

here he is at the gate
with his ultimate ticket
leeve mooder, mooder leet me in

never leaving a message
on her answer phone tape

pause b_______

overgown gathers dust
testing gradual perfect sight

notation spot lights flash across and over
coming to light under your fingers

a slight undulation
at the western most edge
one in ten
seeing light in rain waves

coral cantor in a minor key
love, mum

Unpublished endorsement:  Frances Presley is a splendid and authentic poet whose work shines with exact edge and luminous presence of what she notices and chooses to translate into language.

Kathleen Fraser

Unpublished endorsement:  Frances Presley’s writing engages with serious political concerns underscored with deeply personal experience. The world ‘out there’ of unrest, injustice and conflict is not something to be compartmentalised but co-exists with the domestic on equal terms. A summer flower or childhood memory in Somerset blossoms next to the exploding horrors of semtex. She is not a poet to shy away from life but pushes language into its face until it yelps.

Geraldine Monk