Overview

Headstones are sliding earthwards. An urban fox forages for slugs. A jogger disappears into a forest of sycamores as high-rise blocks glister with the last of the sun. Follow Chris McCabe into the nocturnal world of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park in search of the lost and forgotten poets of the East End. In The East Edge, McCabe leaves the safety of streetlights behind and walks in the footsteps of William Morris and W.G. Sebald through one of London's most enigmatic Victorian cemeteries. Stealing through the shadows, McCabe discovers stories of maritime disasters and the war dead, veers off the path with contemporary poet Stephen Watts, and trawls the archives to uncover one of London's overlooked mavericks, the career criminal-turned-poet William 'Spring' Onions. McCabe's lyrical prose and trademark dark wit are interrupted by a 'disembodied essay', spoken by a poltergeist who has returned to haunt his master's house. In this, the third instalment of McCabe's journey through London's Magnificent Seven, the stakes are raised as he places himself into the foreground of the cemetery as a performer. Can the burial grounds become a space for live theatre? Will the voices of the dead rise to meet the living? What ghosts emerge when darkness falls?

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9781908058683

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Chris McCabe's works crosses genres including poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction genre and visual art. His work has been shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. His books with Penned in the Margins include the two poetry collections Speculatrix and The Triumph of Cancer. He is also writing a series of creative non-fiction books that document his search to find a great lost and forgotten poet in London's Victorian cemeteries. These include In the Catacombs: A Summer Among the Dead Poets of West Norwood Cemetery; Cenotaph South: Mapping the Lost Poets of Nunhead Cemetery and The East Edge: Nightwalks with the Dead Poets of Tower Hamlets. His work has been described by The Guardian as 'an impressively inventive survey of English in the early 21st century'

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