Bryan Biggs & Helen Tookey Editors: Malcolm Lowry: From the Mersey to the World

Helen Tookey mailed me today with the final details of the new book on Lowry that she is editing with Bryan Biggs called Malcolm Lowry: From the Mersey to the World.

I was very proud to be asked to contribute to the new book. My involvement in both the book and the forthcoming festival to celebrate Malc's centenary later this year have galvanised me to bring all my research on Lowry's work into this blog. I thank both Helen and Bryan for supporting my work and giving me focus after years of researching about Lowry and doing nothing with my discoveries.

Here are some details about the book:

Synopsis

Malcolm Lowry described Liverpool as ‘that terrible city whose main street is the ocean’. Born on the Wirral side of the river Mersey, Lowry’s relationship to the Merseyside of his youth informs all of his writing and Liverpool itself continued to hold tremendous significance for him, even though he never returned.

On the occasion of the centenary of his birth in 2009, the Bluecoat, Liverpool’s contemporary arts centre, is working with a group of Lowry enthusiasts in the city and international experts to celebrate this event with an exhibition and related programme (25 September–22 November) examining Lowry’s life and work. The book will be an integral part of this celebration.

The publication will follow a similar trajectory to that of the Bluecoat exhibition, visiting points on Lowry’s compass, and comprising twelve sections (reflecting the symbolically significant twelve chapters of Lowry’s masterpiece, Under the Volcano). It will combine academic and personal perspectives on Lowry and will integrate images of works from the exhibition and other illustrations. It will consist entirely of new research, some of it into lesser-known aspects of Lowry, as well as creative writing in response to his life and work.

Contents:

Ian McMillan, ‘Malcolm Lowry: who he was and who I was and who I am’; Colin Dilnot, ‘Lowry’s Wirral’; Cian Quayle, ‘Elliptical journeys: Malcolm Lowry, exile and return’; Michele Gemelos, ‘Lunatic city: Lowry’s Lunar Caustic and New York’; Alberto Rebollo, ‘It is not Mexico of course, but in the heart…’: Lowry seen from Quauhnáhuac’; Mark Goodall, ‘Lowrytrek’: towards a psychogeography of Malcolm Lowry’s Wirral’; Ailsa Cox, ‘No se puede vivir sin amar’; Annick Drösdal-Levillain, ‘ “Eridanus, Liverpool”: echoes and transformations at the edge of eternity’; Nicholas Murray, ‘Uxorious prose: Malcolm Lowry’s October Ferry to Gabriola’; Michael Turner, ‘The Malcolm Lowry Room’; Robert Sheppard, ‘Malcolm Lowry’s land’; Gordon Bowker, ‘Malcolm Lowry: neglected genius’.

128pp., 40 colour illustrations, 234x156mm, Paperback

Publishing September 2009

You can pre-order the book from Liverpool University Press