I’m going to cheat here and include all of the issues of Savage Messiah, originally self-published by Laura Grace Ford as zines between 2005 and 2009, compiled into a collected edition by Verso in 2011. Produced in a collaged graphic form evoking the DIY fan zines of late 70s punk, the collected works here tell a combined story of a disappearing London, set somewhere between the M25 free parties of the early 1990s, and the tail end of the New Labour era. The spectre of the 2012 London Olympics looms significantly throughout Savage Messiah, in the erosion of landscapes, spaces, communities and histories of working-class London from Golborne Road to the Lea Valley. The visually-led nature of Savage Messiah might cause a certain type of reader to question what exactly this book is – is it literature? Is it art? – but the writing in Savage Messiah is extraordinary. Laura Grace Ford is an incredibly evocative storyteller, veering between Ballardian, dystopian depictions of late-Blair London, to bittersweet, often harsh, but strangely formative stories of love, friendship, hedonism, betrayal and strife. There’s melancholy to it but also joy, and each story / edition works well as a self-contained yet uncontainable story of urban drift.
In Savage Messiah, Verso, 2011
A Personal Anthology 