Buried Garden - Lockdown with the Lost Poets of Abney Park Cemet

Venture into the dense foliage of Abney Park Cemetery in the fourth instalment of writer and literary detective Chris McCabe’s project to unearth the lost poets of London’s Victorian cemeteries – the Magnificent Seven. Propelled through Stoke Newington’s garden-cemetery by Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Machen and Iain Sinclair, McCabe discovers the rich stories of resurrectionists, nonconformists, celebrated hymnologists, and one great lost writer from the Caribbean. In this visionary narrative, combining literary and historical research with dream-like meditations on poetry, nature and death, McCabe starts to believe that Abney Park could be the site of an alternative reality – a buried garden for a year in lockdown. Praise: "A spectral circuit of London, more mysterious than the M25." Iain Sinclair "A triumph of literary archaeology that shines an intense light on buried meaning and hidden London." Tom Bolton "Fabulously labyrinthine ... Ghostly biographies issue from the turf and stone. McCabe, wonderfully attentive to past margins and the present underfoot, gives these forgotten scribes and commentators another chance." Phil Smith "... Deeply researched and wide-ranging in its vision. McCabe writes with energy and verve and manages to effortlessly blend academic research, reportage, speculative fiction, poetry, dreams and fragments of found fiction." Bobby Seal, Psychogeographic Review