Lines of Sight

Frances Presley's Lines of sight brings together all her poems from 'Stone settings and longstones', a sequence framed by the Neolithic stone monuments on Exmoor. The poems reflect the fragile, elusive and even disputed existence of these sites, as well as the enduring landscape which surrounds them. They reveal, too, more recent layers of history, and the creation of new stone settings. The writings of a local woman archaeologist are also a source of rediscovery and radical realignment. This sequence is part of a collaboration and performance with Tilla Brading. Other monuments are engaged with in 'Female figures'. These are the rare statues of women in public spaces. The figures chosen are Queen Anne, Margaret Thatcher and Julian of Norwich, along with the spaces they overlook. The final poetic sequence 'The first book of her life', includes a meditation on the war experiences of Frances Presley's mother, and creatively rereads an old Dutch dictionary and primer, in a search for origins of identity and language.