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
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2 comments:
Alaric came to Nottingham and worked at the Playhouse, which is where I met him. We were very fond of each other and he was a gentle soul - more bohemian than I. How sad to have not known that he'd died all those years ago.
I knew Alaric both at prep school (where he called himself Stephen) and then at Haberdashers. He was a year older than me. Even in his youth at a time when it was quite difficult to be open about sexual identity, he was a trail blazer, boldly wearing his cape as a sign to the world that he was, well- himself. Even though, as a pretty closeted gay adolescent, I found his forthrightness daunting at the time, the effect has been long lasting and beneficial. There were a couple of occasions when he was incredibly kind and supportive towards me- once in particular when he praised a solo improvisation of mine in a drama class, defying the teacher (soon to be headmaster) who seemed determined to ignore me. I have never forgotten that. Sometimes we try and reconnect too late.
Dr. Anthony Gross
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