Happy Birthday, H. P. Lovecraft! HPL was born on this day in 1890, at the family home on Angell Street in Providence, RI. He has a lot to answer for, being one of those figures who seem to lurk in one's imagination for years after you've first read their work, or heard about them. I first came across the name Lovecraft in the Jim Morrison biography No One Here Gets Out Alive (the first, but not the best, bio of JDM). Jim's poetry was compared to Bosch and Lovecraft. I knew who Bosch was, as I'd discovered 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' in an encyclopaedia we had at home (Bosch I suppose is another figure who's haunted my imagination for years, but I'll leave that for another post). Intrigued, I set out to track down books by this Lovecraft fellow. At that time, Lovecraft was out of print in the UK, so I had to frequent second-hand bookshops. I used to trawl all of them in my home town. (Back then, we had about half a dozen places to try for second hand books. All those shops are gone now.) The first one I ever found was The Tomb, the late 60s/early 70s paperback from Panther (pictured above).
It's a collection of minor stories, culled from the larger collection Dagon and Other Stories (Arkham House, 1965). Despite being minor, it did contain a few gems, principally 'The Festival', which has always remained one of my favourite Lovecraft stories. When the things fly out of the darkness at the end, I could see the connection with Bosch. (I won't say any more, in case you haven't read it. I don't want to spoil the ending!) The other Lovecrafts I got from this period were all stories in anthologies: 'The Colour out of Space' and 'The Haunter of the Dark' came to me this way; they remain possibly my two favourite Lovecraft stories for their haunting depictions of rural and urban environments respectively. (Indeed, there is a 'Haunter of the Dark' church a ten-minute walk from where I'm writing this.) When Lovecraft was republished in the UK by Grafton/Granada (AKA HarperCollins), that was tremendously exciting, as it meant I could get to read the bulk of his work, but it kind of spoiled the book-hunting in obscure bookshops. (For a while, at least.)
Another key book for me was Philip Shreffler's H. P. Lovecraft Companion, which explained that many of Lovecraft's stories were set in actual places that still exist. That set me off on a long trail of research and, to cut a long story short, I shot a documentary about Lovecraft - inspired by Shreffler's book, and Lin Carter's Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos, from which I got the phrase 'The Last Disciple', which became the film's title. We managed to track down Frank Belknap Long, who actually knew Lovecraft (as opposed to being one of Lovecraft's man correspondents), biographer L. Sprague de Camp, Colin Wilson, Ramsey Campbell, Stuart Gordon, and the lady who was married to the real-life Charles Dexter Ward. Despite this roster of stars, the film was never fully finished for want of funds (sanity was also in short supply. The work-in-progress received one screening, at the Lovecraft Centenary conference in Providence, and has never been screened again. I have been wondering whether my recently-completed PhD in filmmaking might somehow enable me to finish the Lovecraft film in some way...
The film's real theme, perhaps, was why do people read Lovecraft? What turns us into fans? Despite the trauma of making the film, I still reread Lovecraft, and am working my way slowly through the Collected Letters. And to this day, certain churches - especially those with blackened brickwork, and/or looking deserted - always remind me of 'The Haunter of the Dark'. It's become a reflex. Maybe that's what writing that really chimes with you does: it becomes not just a story that you've read, but a part of your life, a part of the way you experience the world.
The new (third) edition of Andrei Tarkovsky is published on 21 September by Kamera Books. It's revised and updated, and has a slightly different cover. You can pre-order a copy here.
Our documentary, The Dream in the Mirror, is released today as part of Criterion's new Blu-ray and DVD of Tarkovsky's The Mirror (1975). Our film features interviews with Tarkovsky's sister, Marina, and her husband, the late Aleksandr Gordon; composer Eduard Artemyev; critics Mark Le Fanu, Dmitri Salynsky, Vladimir Golstein, Stephanie Sandler, and Vida Johnson; and translators Kitty Hunter-Blair and Layla Alexander-Garrett. You can order a copy here.
This film is part of our ongoing series of films, Andrei Tarkovsky: Cinema of Dreams, more details of which can be found here.
The next chapter of the film, due for release in 2022, will be on The Sacrifice. I'll post more details here when I have them.
I'll be doing a short interview/chat at the Edinburgh Literary Salon on Tuesday 29 June 2021, 1800 (UK time).
It's free to attend, but you need to get tickets here.
The Salon is publishing an anthology of writing by salon regulars, Lost, Looking and Found which will be out in August, in time for the Edinburgh International Book Festival. The anthology is being made in collaboration with publishing students from Edinburgh Napier University. My contribution is a poem.
Anyway, see you tomorrow!
I'll be doing a poetry reading on 4th June 2021, organised by the excellent Poetry Lit series. Details and tickets can be found here.
Meanwhile, my pamphlet The Girl Who Got onto the Ferry in Citizen Kane, is available from Templar Poetry.
My poem 'Men with Guns' has been shortlisted for the 2021 Fish Poetry Prize, judged by former US Poet Laureate, Billy Collins. More info here. The piece is a bit of family folklore, recounting my grandfather's experiences during the Larne Gun Running of 1914.
I'll be taking part in an online poetry reading this evening, Saturday 6 March 2021, organised by The Bakehouse in Gatehouse of Fleet. Star attraction is the estimable and wondrous John Glenday; I will be one of the poets reading in the second half of the evening.
The reading starts at 1930 tonight. More info here.
You can now support me by "buying me a coffee" here https://ko-fi.com/seanmartin. This is, of course, a euphemism for offering modest financial support. But if you do need to know, I am quite partial to lattes with oat milk; but my real favourite hot drink is a hot white chocolate:-)
The folks over at Astrohaus recently ran a competition for people to photograph their Freewrite Traveler. The winning photos were selected for their website. Mine was one of the winning pictures. It's not been a week of peace and quiet, and this image reminds me of what decent writing conditions are like... Anyway, you can see the whole collection of photos, including mine, here.
Here is a good article on Tarkovsky's Stalker, written at the time of the 4K restoration, released on Blu Ray and DVD by Criterion:
https://www.framerated.co.uk/stalker-1979/
I came across this piece because I couldn't remember who was head of Goskino in the mid-70s - was it Filip Yermash, or Nikolai Sizov? (It was the former; Sizov was head of Mosfilm.) And my reason for this little bit of Ecosia-usage is that we are currently making a documentary about Tarkovsky's The Mirror, which will be released by Criterion later this year.
I will post more details when we have finished the film, and when a release date has been announced.
Incidentally, there is a new edition of my book Andrei Tarkovsky in the works. This will be published by Kamera Books later in the year as well. The current edition (the second edition of 2011) is out of print, but the ebook version can be found here.
