INTERVIEW - Author of “The Vorrh”, Brian Catling
there. A passion for subjective fiction rather than objective fact. But never complacent. Its work that makes the wheel turn. Like Peter Blegvad said “the imagination is a muscle it increases with exercise” Also a desire to help others reflect and evolve their own unique invention. GS: Now, you’ve had several books of poetry published, but what was it that made you decide to write a full-length fantasy novel? BC: I had the opening passage of The Vorrh in my head for twenty years. (A man makes a bow from his dead wife; stripping the bones and muscles of her limbs to construct it. A scene of carnage and blood that reeks of murder, but it is not. She has instructed him in how to do it and why). For years I wrote the first three pages. Then chucked them. Seven years ago I decided it was time to do or die, so I started in earnest. I had just finished making the Monument to Execution in the Tower of London and was on my way to do a sculpture/performance art residency in Australia for three month. A perfect Catling act of perversity, to do something opposite to the way I was supposed to be facing. Once the writing got started there was no stopping it. I never considered that I was writing fantasy. I believed that I was writing a surrealist epic, a literary contradiction in terms. Somewhere around the fiftieth page I realised that I had not come up for air and was
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still feverishly going. The Vorrh Trilogy finished at a massive 1,500 pages. Because it seemed to be writing itself, I decided to sent it out in installments to six brave volunteers to make sure that I was not writing rubbish or : “..All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work at no play...” One thing they all told me was that they were surprised they were reading a “page turner”. For a poet involved in distilling enigma and a maker of constructed atmospheric installations, it was a hell of a surprise to me too. GS: Please could you give us a brief overview of The Vorrh and tell us whom you feel it will appeal to most. BC: The Vorrh is the name of an imaginary forest invented by the great surrealist writer Raymond Roussell in his masterpiece Impressions Of Africa. But he never talks about or describes the forest. It is mearly a backdrop to a series of tableau events. I have taken Roussell hostage to be a character in The Vorrh book one. The story is set between 1870 and 1939 and unfolds in Africa, Whitechapel and the California. Central to the story is the destiny of a human Cyclops called Ishmael, who was in secret, raised by a family of Bakelite androids called the KIN in a German colonial city called Essenwald at the rim of the Vorrh. The ancient forest con37
A Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, Brian Catling is an accomplished artist and poet himself. Later this year, the first book in his fantasy trilogy, The Vorrh, will be published by Honest Publishing. The Geek Syndicate Team caught up with the accomplished professor to find out about the book, and the writing process in general. GS: Brian, firstly, on behalf of our readers, thank you for taking the time out to chat with us here at Geek Syndicate about your forthcoming fantasy novel The Vorrh. BC: My pleasure GS: So Brian, you’ve got quite an eclectic career as a poet, sculptor, and performance artist as well as being Professor of Fine Art at The Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art, University of Oxford. What is it that led you to have such a creative output in life? BC: Imagination. I never made any kind of decision about this. It was in me from birth. It is a total belief in the power and application of imagination. An obsession with inventing the world rather than responding to what is accepted as being