Pharmacopoeia by Derek Jarman - A Dungeness Notebook

In 1986 artist and film-maker, Derek Jarman, bought Prospect Cottage, a Victorian fisherman's hut on the desert sands of Dungeness. It was to be a home and refuge for Jarman throughout his HIV diagnosis, and it would provide the stage for one of his most enduring, if transitory, projects - his garden. 

Conceived of as a 'pharmacopeia' - and ever-evolving circle of stones, plants and flotsam sculptures all built and grown in spite of the bracing winds and arid shingle - it remains today a site of fascination and wonder.

Pharmacopoeia brings together the best of Derek Jarman's writing on nature, gardening and Prospect Cottage. Told through journal entries, poems and fragments of prose, it paints a portrait of Jarman's personal and artistic reliance on the space Dungeness offered him, and shows the cycle of the years spent there in on moving collage.

Foreword by Tilda Swinton