Review
an elegy, an urban bucolic around the river and its Eastern banks -- Giula Merlo, Culture Wars, March 2010
A dense and beautiful stylist, McCabe prizes pattern-making above narrative drive ... Shad Thames, Broken Wharf is a multiple narrative of various timescapes, set in a constantly evolving Docklands. -- Julia Bird, Londonist, March 2010
A dense and beautiful stylist, McCabe prizes pattern-making above narrative drive ... Shad Thames, Broken Wharf is a multiple narrative of various timescapes, set in a constantly evolving Docklands. -- Julia Bird, Londonist, March 2010
Product Description
Shad Thames, Broken Wharf is a play of voices that spans centuries of changes across the Docklands, allowing past ghosts to be heard above the white noise of the polemical present.
Set in a pub that has stood on the site since the sixteenth century, we eavesdrop on a conversation between three characters - Echo, a middle-aged woman who has lived her life in the area; Blaise, a northerner who finds resonances with the more familiar docks at Liverpool; and the gregarious landlord, a Londoner with `the knowledge'. Breaking into the dialogue, The Restructure is a sinister, all-knowing Public Service Announcement with `advice' to share with anyone who'll listen...
Shad Thames, Broken Wharf is published as a boxed, limited edition mini-book. Each copy is signed, numbered and hand-printed, and contains a unique object (or objects) mudlarked from the shore of the Thames.
A London Word Festival Commission
About the Author
Chris McCabe was born in Liverpool in 1977. He has published two collections, The Hutton Inquiry (Salt, 2005) and Zeppelins (Salt, 2008), and a pamphlet The Borrowed Notebook (Landfill, 2009). He works as Joint Librarian of The Poetry Library and lives in London and Liverpool with his wife and son.
