1) News of Alaric Sumner Publications
Alaric Sumner: Documentation of his writing and other artistic and related output, version 3 compiled and edited by Lawrence Upton has been published. Type size has been reduced to keep the size in bounds - A4 portrait; Writers Forum; ISBN 978 1 84254 397 X; January 2007
£7.00 + £1.50 (p & p for UK)
Alaric’s LETTERS for dear AUGUSTINE has been republished in a new edition which incorporates typographical errors in the last edition – this is still only the semantic text i.e. excluding the graphic elements; the graphic edition has been delayed but will appear.
£3.50 + £1.50 (p & p for UK)
P & P to other countries, please ask
2) Website
The website is to be abandoned. Even the ISP has given up and it will all be put down at the end of March. Of recent months, there have been relatively few hits (compared to – if I recall correctly – a couple of thousand in 2004) – readers are fickle; and in all probability the pages will be made a section of the Writers Forum website, which will also move. It will still have its own title page.
The new URL will be announced as soon as it is arranged.
3) Blog
In the meantime, a blog called Remembering Alaric Sumner has been opened at http://alaricsumner.blogspot.com/. That’s the third time I have used "Remembering Alaric Sumner" as a title (firstly for a feature in a web-based magazine; secondly for a small booklet; and now thirdly for a blog. That should keep you on your toes.
The blog will be used for additional information, which will be incorporated into the website when it is transferred. The future of the blog will then be reviewed in April 2007, assuming the transfer has gone well.
4) Documentation of Magazine publication by Sumner
A new datum i.e. not in the Documentation book -
“Start”, a magazine, for June 1996 published “Written while watching a rehearsal / Shallal Dance Theatre” in a version different to that published by Perihelion, as well as an untitled visual poem. More details will be in the next Alaric Sumner: Documentation of his writing and other artistic and related output
Saturday 27 January 2007
Alaric Sumner (13 March 1952 - 24th March 2000)
On his mother’s side, Alaric Sumner was Cornish; but his maternal grand-father moved to Kettering and then Bedford at the end of the nineteenth century“
His parents moved to South Africa where he was born in 1952. The parents separated, and he was back in UK with his mother within the year.
He lived in London from 1957 to 1991, when he moved to St Ives. He died in St Ives in 2000 of a previously undiagnosed heart condition.
He joined the London Gay Liberation Front Youth Group in 1970 or 1971; was involved in Gay Sweatshop during the first season; and then “got involved in the Brixton Radical[Ef]Feminist Commune which later moved to Notting Hill. A few years later I was involved in Gay Rights At Work. So, during most of the 70s I was very involved in the London radical gay scene.”
His celebration of his own sexuality and investigation of its consequences in a nasty society was one major factor of his life, not least his artistic life; and the other was the theatre.
He had impressed as a school actor and spent much of the 70s studying theatre idiosyncratically and being an unemployed actor.
He joined Bob Cobbing’s Experimental Poetry Workshop in the mid 70s and founded Zimmer Zimmer Press and, a little later, words worth magazine
In the late 70s, he became a typesetter, a profession he followed, apparently rather successfully, until 1991.
By 1992 he was showing at Penwith Gallery in St Ives; and he performed in London in 1992.
In 1993 he moved temporarily to Leeds while a full time student on the MA in Theatre Studies at University of Leeds, funding himself, where he did brilliantly.
In 1994 Shatter (largely written by him) was presented at the Pleasance in Edinburgh and Voices (for 9) was presented at Royal Court, London. He published two books.
In 1995 he was the first Writer-in-Residence at the newly-opened Tate St Ives where he also exhibited and performed.
Waves on Porthmeor Beach, with drawings by Sandra Blow, published by words worth books was what many publishers would regard as a good seller. Two large print runs sold out; and thereby he widened his potential readership greatly. They sold out in months; but then, with his characteristic generosity, he put the proceeds into publishing a book by a friend, which didn’t sell, and so didn’t have the funds to reprint Waves…
Conversation in Colour was produced at Tate St Ives & Dartington College of Arts; and he became a lecturer in Performance Writing at Dartington on a part-time contract, initially ending in 1999 and then extended.
Dartington became a focus. He took a small flat in nearby Totnes and spent increasing amounts of time in Devon.
He had another success with The Unspeakable Rooms which Rory McDermott devised and performed from Alaric's text; he made a number of pieces with the musician John Levack Drever; and then Nekyia, made with the composer Joseph Hyde. All are quite remarkable and were successful by any reasonable measure.
His last publication during his life was Bucking Curtains, a large format book (2x A3) of plundered texts and apparently abstract visuals launched in Totnes on 1 March 2002.
Bucking Curtains and its performance were well-received; and he was buoyant.
His last emails were upbeat and generally confident about work and about his life although he was soon very ill; and, by the end of the month, was dead.
He was buried at Longstone cemetery, near St Ives, without religious rites, just as he would have wished, with friends and colleagues speaking of him. The cemetery building, hardly small, was too small to contain everyone who turned up, many from far away.
Objectively, his papers were left in considerable disorder. He hadn’t expect to die and he hadn’t prepared what he had made for the future. Much was lost.
But much was saved; and it is all being recorded.
There is a dedicated website at http://pages.britishlibrary.net/sumner which will, unfortunately, have to move shortly. From there you can link to another Remembering Alaric Sumner, a feature on Masthead (ISSN 1441-791X), an Australian based webzine edited and published by Alison Croggon.
Sumner’s main posthumous publisher is Writers Forum: http://writersforumpublications.blogspot.com/
This blog will, at least, act as a bridge between the current website and its new location
Lawrence Upton © 2007
His parents moved to South Africa where he was born in 1952. The parents separated, and he was back in UK with his mother within the year.
He lived in London from 1957 to 1991, when he moved to St Ives. He died in St Ives in 2000 of a previously undiagnosed heart condition.
He joined the London Gay Liberation Front Youth Group in 1970 or 1971; was involved in Gay Sweatshop during the first season; and then “got involved in the Brixton Radical[Ef]Feminist Commune which later moved to Notting Hill. A few years later I was involved in Gay Rights At Work. So, during most of the 70s I was very involved in the London radical gay scene.”
His celebration of his own sexuality and investigation of its consequences in a nasty society was one major factor of his life, not least his artistic life; and the other was the theatre.
He had impressed as a school actor and spent much of the 70s studying theatre idiosyncratically and being an unemployed actor.
He joined Bob Cobbing’s Experimental Poetry Workshop in the mid 70s and founded Zimmer Zimmer Press and, a little later, words worth magazine
In the late 70s, he became a typesetter, a profession he followed, apparently rather successfully, until 1991.
By 1992 he was showing at Penwith Gallery in St Ives; and he performed in London in 1992.
In 1993 he moved temporarily to Leeds while a full time student on the MA in Theatre Studies at University of Leeds, funding himself, where he did brilliantly.
In 1994 Shatter (largely written by him) was presented at the Pleasance in Edinburgh and Voices (for 9) was presented at Royal Court, London. He published two books.
In 1995 he was the first Writer-in-Residence at the newly-opened Tate St Ives where he also exhibited and performed.
Waves on Porthmeor Beach, with drawings by Sandra Blow, published by words worth books was what many publishers would regard as a good seller. Two large print runs sold out; and thereby he widened his potential readership greatly. They sold out in months; but then, with his characteristic generosity, he put the proceeds into publishing a book by a friend, which didn’t sell, and so didn’t have the funds to reprint Waves…
Conversation in Colour was produced at Tate St Ives & Dartington College of Arts; and he became a lecturer in Performance Writing at Dartington on a part-time contract, initially ending in 1999 and then extended.
Dartington became a focus. He took a small flat in nearby Totnes and spent increasing amounts of time in Devon.
He had another success with The Unspeakable Rooms which Rory McDermott devised and performed from Alaric's text; he made a number of pieces with the musician John Levack Drever; and then Nekyia, made with the composer Joseph Hyde. All are quite remarkable and were successful by any reasonable measure.
His last publication during his life was Bucking Curtains, a large format book (2x A3) of plundered texts and apparently abstract visuals launched in Totnes on 1 March 2002.
Bucking Curtains and its performance were well-received; and he was buoyant.
His last emails were upbeat and generally confident about work and about his life although he was soon very ill; and, by the end of the month, was dead.
He was buried at Longstone cemetery, near St Ives, without religious rites, just as he would have wished, with friends and colleagues speaking of him. The cemetery building, hardly small, was too small to contain everyone who turned up, many from far away.
Objectively, his papers were left in considerable disorder. He hadn’t expect to die and he hadn’t prepared what he had made for the future. Much was lost.
But much was saved; and it is all being recorded.
There is a dedicated website at http://pages.britishlibrary.net/sumner which will, unfortunately, have to move shortly. From there you can link to another Remembering Alaric Sumner, a feature on Masthead (ISSN 1441-791X), an Australian based webzine edited and published by Alison Croggon.
Sumner’s main posthumous publisher is Writers Forum: http://writersforumpublications.blogspot.com/
This blog will, at least, act as a bridge between the current website and its new location
Lawrence Upton © 2007
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