Reading with Jarman is an online reading group facilitated by the project Jarman Now (@jarman_now). The group is exploring Derek Jarman’s library at Prospect Cottage, Dungeness, his final home in Kent. Reflecting the diversity of Jarman’s interests and outputs, from paintings to films to gardening, the library is equally as wide-ranging offering rich opportunities for the curious reader. The challenge has been how to do justice to the library’s complexity while not becoming overwhelmed by it. This has been partly resolved by seeing the library itself as a ‘text’, a gateway to Jarman’s thinking at any given time and what might have informed that thinking as we consider the wider context of Jarman’s practice alongside our key text selection.
This must be qualified with awareness that the library was added to after Jarman’s death in 1994, by his long-term companion Keith Collins who lived at the cottage until his own death in 2018. Subsequently the cottage was bought by Folkestone Creative in whose care it now resides and who have themselves added to the library as new publications have emerged, I am delighted that Jarman Now’s own inaugural publications are part of the Prospect library. In this way the collection is a palimpsest of Jarman’s own thinking as well a consideration the ongoing critical evaluation of his legacy.
Reflecting this ‘Reading with Jarman’ are approaching the library thematically taking a key text from a core theme with the option for additional reading from the library to unpack meaning and resonance. Jarman’s creativity is an interconnected labyrinth of thinking making reading in isolation another pleasurable challenge. Since our inception in early 2026 the group have explored the idea of the diary, reading Jarman’s own alongside others in his collection such Samuel Pepys famous diary of 17th Century London Life, the idea of Alchemy, which Jarman pursued through Renaissance England and the figure of John Dee and more contemporarily through the writings of psychoanalyst Carl Jung. The transformative image of fire, a key symbol in much of Jarman’s work, in fact he famously said he wanted to have Prospect Cottage burnt down after his death, undoubtably comes from his engagement with Jung’s theories.
‘Reading with Jarman’ is part of the wider project Jarman Now, which began over lockdown as a series of conversations with Jarman’s collaborators such as Howard Sooley, the co-creator of the garden at Prospect and James Mackay, Jarman’s film director. The project is concerned to continue discussions initiated by Jarman’s work particularly in relation to prescient contemporary issues around identity, ‘Englishness’, ecology and displacement though discussion, events and the commissioning of new work.
Reflecting Jarman’s own method of working the concern is to foreground collaboration and a democratic exchange of ideas over more conventional notions of expertise and routes of learning.
More about Jarman Now and ‘Reading with Jarman’ can be found at its Instagram page @jarman_now.
Image Credits: Jarman Now .