Double 7"
"The poems on this recording are read by Ruth Wiggins and are extracts from her lyric history of Barking Abbey, The Lost Book of Barkynge, which was published by Shearsman Books earlier this year. The result is an immersive poetic encounter.
This work has been influenced by the deep listening theory of Paulina Olivera. It is a coming together of numerous elements, and ultimately remains true to the poet’s original voice in its pure form. The tone poem accompaniment supports the spoken word to enhance the emotive drive of the subject and is a mixture of field recordings and synthesized keyboard.
we hope you enjoy!
Here is a review of Ruth’s The Lost Book aof Barkynge by The Poetry Society:
In her debut collection, Ruth Wiggins recovers the forgotten voices of the nuns, abbesses and local women of the medieval abbey at Barking. Against a backdrop of famine, plague, war and spiritual upheaval, these poems explore the strange, uncertain days of the early abbey: mysterious visions, politics, violence and sisterhood, and end with the final abbess mourning the eradication of her home as the Dissolution unhouses her, her sisters, and countless others across Europe. Barking was one of the most significant abbeys in Britain and a centre of learning for women, it offered space to the devout, the bookish, and those who simply did not fit anywhere else. These poems introduce some remarkable characters: poets, visionaries, washerwomen and queens, and range from the sacred feminine to the protofeminist. Whether one reads The Lost Book of Barkynge as a series of monologues or as a sequence evoking time and place, what emerges is an excavation of forgotten stories. Here the lost voices of the women of Barking are restored in poems that voice the power and poignancy of their lives
Ruth Wiggins is a British poet. She is based in East London but is happiest in the great outdoors, something which continues to inform her work. She studied English & Latin at Durham University and has three adult sons. Her poetry and essays have been included in UK and international journals and anthologies. The Lost Book of Barkynge is Ruth’s first full collection. The Lost Book… is a 900-year lyric history of Barking Abbey, told through the eyes of the women that lived there. Ruth also has three pamphlets: Myrtle (Emma Press, 2014); a handful of string (Paekakariki Press, 2020); and Menalhyl (a private pressing of poems first published in Long Poem Magazine in 2016.) " PEARL HOME
