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The material of the Landscapes is apparently an allegorical interpretation and a reconstruction/prediction of Matthews' own life in which curiously stylised industrial or moor-land backgrounds hold recognisable, and, though the treatment is hardly realistic, recurrent figures, animals, birds and 'metaphoric objects.' (the broken stool, the light-bulb, the fly-paper, the white gull, the clock.) Matthews claimed that the main body of the work(s) had been created predictively and argued that in essence and conception and indeed in all but for a few minor points of execution they had been created and completed 'prior to the events they predict.'
About the author
Keith Howden was born near Burnley in 1932. He is married, with three children. After National Service and work as a laboratory assistant, he taught English and modern European fiction with a major interest in 'the text as event' at Nottingham Trent University. Among his many poetry pamphlets are Joe Anderson, Daft Jack's Ideal Republics, Pauper Grave, Hanging Alice Nutter and Barlow Agonistes. He has published three full-length collections, Marches of Familiar Landscape (Peterloo 1978), Onkonkay (Peterloo (1984) and Jolly Roger (Smokestack 2012). Recently, with his son, the composer Matthew Howden, he has completed two poetry music collaborations, with accompanying discs: The Matter of Britain (PRE Rome 2009) and Barley Top (Redroom 2013).
