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).
It has proved difficult to separate the usually
melodramatically rendered life from a creative achievement
that, despite a further number of successfully achieved
canvases, depends essentially on the series, Landscapes with
Handless Man, a linked sequence of large canvases (all
approximately six feet by six feet) created in a period of his
life before (as he perhaps unbelievably claimed) many of
the ‘events’ they contain and illustrate. After the first
Exhibition of the Landscapes, Matthews achieved a
short-lived cult status which to some smaller extent has
continued to the present.
Landscape with Sam Hargreaves eating a pie
Landscape with Drowning
Landscape with Stalf
Landscape with Cenotaph
Landscape with First Gun giving
Landscape with Arthur
Landscape with His Question
Landscape with Her Answer
Landscape with Handless Man
Landscape with Second Gun giving
She tells her love’s landscapes
He tells his love’s landscapes
Landscape with Enigma
Landscape with Denison Dead
Landscape with Drift Mine
Landscape with Goad
Landscape with First Denison Ghost
Landscape with Second Denison Ghost
Landscape with Singer and Friday’s Comedian
Landscape with Appropriate figures
Landscape with Singer
Landscape with dying Singer
Last Landscapes
Landscape with Cortege
Landscape with Friday’s Comedian
Landscape with Joke
Paperback 6" x 9" 62 pages
ISBN 978-1-326-09886-5
