Vaster than Empires and More Slow

This chapter focuses on the life and work of English filmmaker, painter, diarist, queer rights campaigner, and radical gardener Derek Jarman. The title of this chapter, "vaster than empires and more slow," is derived from Renaissance poet Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress. The poem also gestures towards the different conceptions of space and time that preoccupied Jarman, both vast and slow. In 1964, Jarman entered the Slade School of Art, where in the more permissive atmosphere, he felt better able to express his identity as a gay man. That year, he had his first adult sexual encounter with a young Canadian psychology student. In August 1969, Jarman's life changed in a very significantly when he moved into the first of a series of warehouses on the banks of the river Thames. Jarman's The Tempest opened at the 1979 Edinburgh Film Festival to an audience of 2,000 people.