FITZGERALD, Claire
Crooked Ruins - ECHOES 7

Crooked Ruins: Writing and Gardening at Sissinghurst offers a situated reading of English Modernist writer and
gardener Vita Sackville-West's oeuvre. Commercially successful in her day, Sackville-West's contribution to
literature has since been overlooked in favour of her association with Virginia Woolf - her close friend and
lover - inspiring the character for Woolf's novel Orlando (1928). Likewise, Sackville-West's prolific garden
writing is often studied separately from her poetry and novels, the celebrity of Sissinghurst Castle garden itself
overshadowing the singular prose it inspired.

Adopting the mode of a psychogeographical promenade, this reading brings together the various facets of
Sackville-West's real and imagined worlds. Excerpts from the British Bird Series of the Shell Nature Records,
produced by the American oil and gas company in 1967, allude to Sackville-West's interest in birds and
passion long road trips by car

[publisher's note]

Published by Joyfully Waiting, 2024
Music & Sound