Derek Jarman, Smiling in Slow Motion

John Mepham (Kingston University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.09: English Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary Britain , 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Gina Lyle (University of Glasgow), Graham MacPhee (University of Manchester), Kerry Myler (Birmingham Newman University), Jenni Ramone (The Nottingham Trent University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1994

Places

England (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Non-Fiction
- Autobiography (literary)
- Journal/ Diary

Resources

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Derek Jarman wrote a series of autobiographical texts, scripts and journals, in which he again and again revisited his past and continually reinvented the forms of self-writing. The sequence includes

Dancing Ledge

(1984),

The Last of England

(1987) (republished as

Kicking the Pricks

(1996)),

Modern Nature

(1991),

At Your Own Risk

(1992),

Smiling in Slow Motion

(2000),

Blue

(1993), and

Chroma

(1994).

“I'm continually reinventing my own past, it is not static,” Jarman writes in these journals. Not only does he reinvent his past he also reinvents himself and the genre of autobiography. The non-chronological “autobiographical collage”, or compilation, that he used in the first two books in the series, gives way in this volume to a more conventional form, that of the journal, as used

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1432 words

Citation: Mepham, John. "Smiling in Slow Motion". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 March 2002 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=2005, accessed 26 April 2024.]

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