Output details

'Leverets' (short story) with linked reflective essay 'The Bokeh and Beyond'

The short story “Leverets” explores the lives of working class characters in a lead-mining district of North Yorkshire in the mid-nineteenth century, linking together ideas of freedom and liberty through acts of poaching, with underlying reference to the Atlantic slave trade and industrial working conditions for lead miners; galena and its extraction acts as an underpinning motif for the story. Research was carried out directly through site visits to the area, its landscape and its museums. This was underpinned by reference to a textual source, James Hawker’s Journal: The Diary of a Victorian Poacher (ed. Garth Christian, Oxford University Press, 1978). In this publication, Hawker himself makes many direct references to the notion of poaching as a form of political liberty. Further research was undertaken into the Abolition of The Slave Trade (within the British Empire), the introduction and implementation of the “Night Poaching Act” (1828) and also into firearms used during the historical period in question. A series of photographs taken on site supported this research and were published with the story and essay.

The linked essay is a reflection upon the practice of creative writing in the academy, using the photographic concept of the bokeh as a central metaphor. The essay considers short fictional techniques as applied in the story and the forms of invention that are linked to situated and historical research that led to its formation, positioning them in the wider context of research whilst arguing for more flexible concepts of definition within this context. Short story and essay were published together in Short Fiction in Theory and Practice (a leading UK journal) in 2013. They will be published in a future collection.