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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
'The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette tells the tale of the author's great-grandmother's cousin, Richard Parker, a cabin-boy on a yacht being sailed from Southampton to Sydney in 1884 for Jack Want a prominent New South Wales barrister and politician. The Mignonette foundered in the South Atlantic far from land, and after nineteen days with no sight of any other vessel to rescue them, and with all four in a terrible state, the captain and mate decided to murder and eat poor Richard. Days later the remaining sailors were rescued and returned to Falmouth to face justice. The original trial at Exeter Assize was moved to The Old Bailey due to huge public interest and the need to clarify the Empire’s maritime legal framework regarding what had been common practice.
'The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette takes place in the West Country, at sea and in Australia. It explores power relationships, individual motives, survivor guilt and self-justification, and justice and divine retribution. Poetry heightens the tension and drives the narrative telling the personal and human story of one of the most important legal judgements in English Law—that necessity is not a defence for murder—and is still taught at universities the world over.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
Notes
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Dedication:
for my brothers and my sister
Richard, Peter and Jennie -
Epigraph:
the lights of the lamps
in the windows, call back the day and the dead that
have run away to seaDylan Thomas
Under Milk Wood
Cannibalism is both a terrible transgression and a
strange communion, a human body feeding and sus-
taining another body.Rebecca Solnit
The Faraway Nearby -
Novel in verse form.
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Selected as one of National Poetry Day (UK)'s recommended poetry books for 2021.
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The poem "My Mignonette" ...turns into a gorgeous, almost incomprehensible tumult. Punctuation and grammar become unmoored in a Gerard Manley Hopkins-ish ecstasy that feels at once Victorian and avant-garde" from the review "The Best Poetry Books of 2021 so far" published 9 July 2021 in The Telegraph (London).
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
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On Researching and Writing The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette
2024
single work
essay
— Appears in: Rabbit , no. 38 2024; (p. 123-129) -
The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette
2022
single work
essay
— Appears in: Axon : Creative Explorations , December vol. 12 no. 2 2022; 'This paper references the writing of the Australia Council funded verse novel The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette and the additional print folio created as a practical example of using formal and informal archives and the extent that places, people, and material form enabling networks for the production of new work. Because I trained as a visual artist rather than as a writer, I find it very difficult to confine myself to working solely in one medium. Archival material is not merely stored as a static and revered object but is capable of becoming mobilised and motivated by use, and to affect the practice of the artist/writer through ideas, travel and social contacts. The archive grows through the networks it assumes with the past and new material created from it, showing the circularity of creative production around archival material and its sites.'(Publication abstract)
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[Review] The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Daily Telegraph , 9 July 2021;
— Review of The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette 2021 single work novel
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[Review] The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette
2021
single work
review
— Appears in: The Daily Telegraph , 9 July 2021;
— Review of The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette 2021 single work novel -
The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette
2022
single work
essay
— Appears in: Axon : Creative Explorations , December vol. 12 no. 2 2022; 'This paper references the writing of the Australia Council funded verse novel The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette and the additional print folio created as a practical example of using formal and informal archives and the extent that places, people, and material form enabling networks for the production of new work. Because I trained as a visual artist rather than as a writer, I find it very difficult to confine myself to working solely in one medium. Archival material is not merely stored as a static and revered object but is capable of becoming mobilised and motivated by use, and to affect the practice of the artist/writer through ideas, travel and social contacts. The archive grows through the networks it assumes with the past and new material created from it, showing the circularity of creative production around archival material and its sites.'(Publication abstract)
-
On Researching and Writing The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette
2024
single work
essay
— Appears in: Rabbit , no. 38 2024; (p. 123-129)
Awards
- 2022 shortlisted Wales Book of the Year — English@Bangor Uni Poetry Award
- 2020 shortlisted Dorothy Hewett Award for an Unpublished Manuscript
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Exeter,
Devon (County),
cEngland,ccUnited Kingdom (UK),cWestern Europe, Europe,
- At sea,
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cAustralia,c