The Seafarer, translation by Matthew Hollis, original photographs by Norman McBeath

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 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.

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.’