in the country garden/the end of england (Book, 2023)
In a feverfew dream somewhere between Penda’s Fen and Riddley Walker, Jack Young’s pamphlet is a morderous and joyful denaturing of the garden as metonym for England. I marvelled to watch its illicit crops – Latin taxonomy, Arthurian folly and 90s arcadia – mutate into an effervescent meadow, a queer & borderless botania
– Daisy Lafarge
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Through the collapse of the country garden, thomas malory is transported to 21st century england. As the garden collapses and loses its Latin taxonomies, what emerges is a queer ode to bodily and botanical love. From malory to 90s video game arcadia, this is a queering of the pastoral, unravelling botanical archives and enacting the end of ‘England’ and its neo-colonial grip on language and plants. Published Autumn 2023 with SPAMpress.
In Young's country garden invitations, fantasies & distortions sprout up amongst murdered petals, the weeds act of 1959, & lovers spittle-thick in the hawthorn. While wandering errantly towards and away from narrative, 90s gamer culture & Arthurian representations, intervals of time decay & language deserts colonial taxonomies. the end of england is a back/slashing/escape/sequence of grotesque erotics that pulls down garden walls, & breeches, perverting & renewing our sense of the pastoral.
– declan wiffen
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{preview below}
Cover art: sam williams