Output details

Sancti Clandestini: Undercover Saints

This collection is an illustrated contemporary hagiography of alternative patron saints, with underlying critiques of contemporary society. The work also explores the influence of text on visual practice.

It responds to the following research questions: How can the conceit of the ‘alternative patron saint’ be elaborated and augmented over a collection of poems? What range of form and style can be used to capture the essence of imaginary saints (or their ‘charges’) in order to ‘tell all the truth, but tell it slant’ over a range of contemporary issues? How does the combination of text and illustration create new sites for engagement with poetry?

These poems began with the deliberate identification of a contemporary issue to be explored through the concept of the Patron Saints. Refining and reshaping through this lens led to a discovery that the constriction of the conceptual frame paradoxically led to a freedom of approach and voice.

This multimodal collaboration involved a group of artists who drew direct interpretation from the text as a source, gaining a sense of ownership of the poetry.

The poetry draws on the narrative/ lyric mode of Hardy; traditional Lives of the Saints; religious poetry ranging from George Herbert to R.S. Thomas - in turn echoing the cadences of the King James Bible - and blends these with the humour and accessibility of Cope, Collins and Duffy to mine controversial issues.

The concept of an illustrated hagiography draws on the long history of illustrated manuscripts, on the author’s own work as a film-maker, on collections by poets including Oswald and Sloboda working with one illustrator, on a deliberate reversal of the increasingly common practice of ekphrastic poetry, and harks back to the tradition of the illustrated fresco, the biblical text made familiar through its expression in paint.