'The Seafarer' launches
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; I cannot stop the wave from breaking: lost to the lookout, watchful at prow, my keel-hand shaking in the spill; driven too much toward rocks.
A new translation for our times by Matthew Hollis of the classic Anglo-Saxon poem of exile, with a visual sonnet sequence of 14 photographs by Norman McBeath
In what way should we live our lives? What are our obligations to ourselves and others, so that in our time we ‘shall have acted well’?
The poem asks what it means to be a good ancestor, prompting us to consider our responsibility for future generations.
With planetary weather growing dangerously wild and societal bonds breaking, our desire to find a life in tune with the natural elements becomes ever more urgent. The Seafarer commands us as strongly today as it did a thousand years ago to hear the universal spirit-music of land, wind and sea.
Copies are now available to 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.’
