Colonial Countryside: Creative and Historical Responses: Creative and Historical Responses

Corinne Fowler

ISBN 10: 1845235665 / ISBN 13: 9781845235666

Verlag: Peepal Tree Press Ltd, 2024

Beschreibung

Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 18396802572

Bibliografische Details

• Titel: Colonial Countryside: Creative and Historical Responses: Creative and Historical Responses
• Verlag: Peepal Tree Press Ltd
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN-10: 1845235665
• ISBN-13: 9781845235666
• Einband: Softcover
• Zustand: New

Über diesen Titel

Inhaltsangabe

Colonial Countryside is a book of commissioned poems and short stories produced by ten global majority writers featuring National Trust houses with significant colonial histories. This includes properties whose owners engaged in the slavery business, in colonial administration or who were involved with the East India Company or British rule in India. Historians have accompanied these pieces with commentaries detailing the evidence upon which each creative commission was based. The book ends with a photo essay by the project’s commissioned photographer, Ingrid Pollard, the Turner Prize shortlisted artist who has pioneered critical interventions into the supposed whiteness of the British countryside. Peter Kalu’s story gives an account of Richard Watt of Speke Hall reflecting on his Jamaican experiences; Karen Onojaife’s story is set in Charlecote Park where a once-favoured Black page finds himself cut adrift; Jacqueline Crooks’ magical realist tale brings together an abused Indian princess and enslaved African employed in the mahogany trade; Ayanna Lloyd Banwo has written about Diego, the Spanish-speaking African who became Drake’s closest confidante; Masuda Snaith’s short story cycle tracks the cross-currents of empire across Lord Curzon’s Kedleston Hall; Maria Thomas’s account of Penrhyn Castle links past and present. It is a gothic tale of history biting back. Malachi’s story features a young Black man who dates a white girl with a taste for country house visiting, including Calke Abbey. Other contributions include poetic meditations on artefacts to be found in country houses. Hannah Lowe reflects on the taste for Chinoiserie, Seni Seneviratne gives voice to the enslaved children trapped within the frames of 18 th century art and Andre Bagoo makes connections between William Blathwayt of Dyrham Park and two stands featuring kneeling African men, brought to the house by his uncle in the seventeenth century.

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Andre Bagoo is a Trinidadian poet and writer. He is the author of Trick Vessels (Shearsman Books, 2012) BURN (Shearsman Books, 2015) which was longlisted for the 2016 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and Pitch Lake, which was published by Peepal Tree Press. His poetry has appeared at journals such as Almost Island, Boston Review, Caribbean Review of Books, Draconian Switch, St Petersburg Review, The Poetry Review and elsewhere.

Seni Seneviratne, born and raised in Leeds, is of English and Sri Lankan heritage. Her poem 'A Wider View' is included on the AQA GCSE poetry syllabus, and her collection, Unknown Soldier (2019), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and National Poetry Day Choice. She is a fellow of the Complete Works programme and has collaborated with film-makers, visual artists, musicians and digital artists. She is currently one of ten commissioned writers on the Colonial Countryside Project: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted. She lives in Derbyshire.

Professor Corinne Fowler is a research expert at the University of Leicester, and is Director of Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted. She specialises in the legacies of colonialism and postcolonialism to literature, heritage and representations of British history. She is the author of Green Unpleasant Land.