British Mountaineers

‘Into a little grave I looked

and gently among mountains

grew extinct’

Written in 1942, F. S. Smythe’s British Mountaineers recounts the history of a sport to tell the story of the brave, the triumphant and the tragic. Using the process of erasure, Faye Latham reshapes Smythe’s text into a unique, dream-like tale told from the perspective of an avalanche victim. Words are painted over and buried beneath the snow. Fragments of conversation tumble down like sentences cut off in the wind. The narrative voice is as changeable and combative as the weather, momentarily strong then filled with doubt, transiently still then bursting with life. Holding onto language, the original text resists its complete erasure. A voice speaks to the reader from beneath.

Cutting steps through the landscape of the page, this collection raises age old questions, not in an attempt to answer them, but to reframe them in a contemporary form. What happens when we bury ourselves within a landscape? What do we become, and who will remember us? At the brink of losing everything, what stories are we left with? What do we leave behind?

Faye Latham's British Mountaineers is a paperback collection of over 60 uniquely beautiful erasure poems, each is printed in full colour. This is a book of stunning and thoughtful artwork as much as it is a collection of poetry.

"Latham takes us on a completely novel mountain journey."

Anna Fleming, author of Time on Rock: A Climber's Route into the Mountains

" With this work of art, Faye Latham turns the act of erasure in climbing history upon itself, invoking the often-hidden presences of the lost and the suppressed, the missing and the expunged. The result is at once luminous, haunting, and unforgettable—the kind of book that changes how you see the mountains and the world. "

Katie Ives, author of Imaginary Peaks: The Riesenstein Hoax and Other Mountain Dreams