A Finger in the Fishes Mouth is Derek Jarman’s sole early poetry book, first published in 1972 and later almost entirely destroyed by the author. This facsimile edition restores a missing, formative work from the very beginning of Jarman’s practice.

The book is heavily illustrated with postcards from Jarman’s own collection, combining text and image in a loose, collage-like form that clearly anticipates his later methods as a filmmaker and visual artist. The poems are raw, rhythmic and very intimate. 

This is Jarman as artist testing materials, instincts, and ways of seeing. Its rarity and destruction have given it near-mythic status, but what matters more is how clearly it foreshadows the aesthetic logic that would define Jarman’s later work.