Hazel Press newsletter: Autumn 2024
New translation of The Seafarer, Summit festival, the latest on the Hazel blog
The Seafarer, a new translation for our times of the classic Anglo-Saxon poem. By Matthew Hollis with original photographs by Norman McBeath, to be published on 28th November
Come, lean in for this song of myself.
Bear with me these tides of telling.
Days without dawn, nights of no end,
the oceans upturning. I cannot calm
the surge within
The seafarer is alone on an empty and threatening winter ocean. And not just alone, but something far more punishing still: he is cast out. To be the winter wunade – to be the seafarer – is to pose ourselves a series of troubling questions.
In what way should we live our life: from the security of the known, or on the risky path of revelation? What should our obligations be: to depend upon others, or survive in our way alone? And what of our greater purpose: is it to live, or merely to exist?
As our planetary weather grows dangerously wild, as our kinship to society comes under strain, and as we desire to find a life in tune with natural elements, the poem commands us urgently to hear again, as the Anglo-Saxons did, the spirit-music of land, wind and sea.
Copies are now available for pre-order on our website here.
About the photographs:
Norman McBeath says: ‘On first reading the opening lines of Matthew’s translation and interpretation of The Seafarer, I was instantly captivated by the salience of the words for our current times. The psychological depths revealed in such spare, strong language drew me in from the start.
‘It has always been a guiding principle for me in my collaborative work that any pairing of image and text should not be directly descriptive or explanatory. The words and images should always be able to stand on their own. The photographs I selected in response to Matthew’s work are evocative, largely abstract in nature and open to multiple interpretations.’
Launch event for The Seafarer at the LRB Bookshop
Matthew and Norman will be talking about their collaboration on The Seafarer at the London Review Bookshop on 28th November. Tickets are now on sale here.
Hazel poets reading at Summit festival
Ella Duffy and Matthew Hollis are reading at Summit: A Poetry School Festival at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park this weekend (19th October). Ella is reading Greencombe: A poem in paths and Matthew is reading Leaves.
Summit is a new ecopoetry, nature and climate writing festival in collaboration with the University of Leeds Poetry Centre, the Laurel Prize, the National Poetry Centre, and Yorkshire Sculpture Park. More details here.
Mud and stars
The Hazel blog features three poems set in Cambridgeshire by emerging poet, Jemimah Hawkes. You can read them here.
Jemimah has just completed an MA in poetry at Royal Holloway and the poems featured are from her final collection, Startled Body.