Tag: Laura Grace Ford

‘Savage Messiah 1 – 10’ by Laura Grace Ford

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

‘Tuscan Leather’ by Laura Grace Ford

How regrettable it is that magazines stop ~ Rest-In-Sweet-Peace The White Review! ‘Tuscan Leather’ by Laura Grace Ford is signature-ly bleak. I listened to Ayşegül Savaş on the difficulty of writing fiction that’s happy-without-smug the other day and was heartened it might be possibe; but Laura Grace Ford’s work is often unhappy and * so * far from smug and this too is welcome. “KARA” and “FRANK” make up ‘Tuscan Leather’ as connected narratives. In “KARA”, Kara copes with an abusive boyfriend situation drifting “skittish” East London “the air is cinder toffee and carbon” amid “thirty-story ravines and ziggurat hotels, new expressways and conference centres” and “UK Garage, decelerated Jungle”. Laura Grace Ford is Princess of Ambience I think and also really good at doing getting ready: “I rubbed a circle in the mirror, raced through the ritual: orange lipstick, copper eyeshadow, black kohl”. ‘Tuscan Leather’ is meandery, spatially (weaving evictions demolitions new-builds) and temporally (bad memories everywhere kindled by “chanced-upon street” or “the scent of Tuscan Leather on a stranger’s skin”). Endurance glimmers with sum1 named “Idris”: “our relationship kept us going through the winter, it staved off the dark”. <3. We learn Frank’s someone Kara, who wears a Puffa jacket, once was a care-worker for. Sumptuous writing, melodic through dank dereliction. Sparklers and the frankinsence. Frank, after Kara’s wondered if he’s okay wherever he is, in “FRANK” then reveries Kara gorgeously. Laura Grace Ford’s illustrations are there too – paintings, biro-drawings, watery blue ink. She really gets it  <3.

First published in The White Review No. 30, 2021 and to read online here