In Stinkhorn the artist, musician and writer Siôn Parkinson asks: What can the pervasive stench of this mushroom and the droning noise of the flies compelled towards it reveal about how sounds and smells are combined in the imagination? The result is a book that delivers a heady mix of natural history, science writing, musicology, philosophy of the senses and illness memoir.

The stinkhorn mushroom is one of the weirdest wonders of the fungal world, certainly the smelliest. Ever since it was described by a Dutch doctor in a sixteenth-century pamphlet, the stinkhorn has been reported to emit odors resembling damp earth, dung, rotting cheese, decaying flesh, and even semen. It also happens to look like a phallus, bursting out of a subterranean egg to poke above the ground, where it lures insects towards its slimy, fetid cap. In Stinkhorn, artist, musician, and writer Siôn Parkinson asks: What can the pervasive stench of this mushroom and the droning noise of the flies compelled towards it reveal about how sounds and smells are combined in the imagination?

Parkinson uses examples of so-called bad smells to argue for a theory of Stink as a kind of “smelling sound.” Alongside images and insights from the author’s search for stinkhorn fungi in nature, the book expands upon the philosophy of listening to consider the role of the nose and the “nasal imaginary” in how we make sense of sound.

Inserted in the book is a 16-page facsimile of the Neo-Latin–English translation of The Description of the Phallus by Hadrianus Junius, translated by Caroline Spearing.

Sternberg Press, 208pp, 17cm x 24cm, 8 colour & 48 b/w illustrations, hardcover with dust jacket, 2024