Writing with
Alaric Sumner

Lawrence Upton

The late Alaric Sumner and I wrote collaboratively for a number of years, in 2 periods of writing activity.

We took as a methodology the procedure that Bob Cobbing and I evolved in the making of Domestic Ambient Noise. One took a poem of the other's and made 6 variations upon it. The other took one of those variations and made his 6 variations.

Initially the intention had been to publish the texts, probably without attributing any one text to any one writer; but that project was abandoned in favour of using the process as a workshop.

During 1999, we agreed to abandon the second collaboration and take a breather before embarking on a third collaboration. (The terms of the third collaboration were worked out a few weeks before he died.) Knowing that we were going to change our approach, we agreed that each would be free to use their own work.

I abandoned a great deal of my writing, but kept what became two separate sequences:

Time to die

5 Parting Songs

3 of the 5 Parting Songs were published in the Winter 98/99 issue of the web magazine Onyx.

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