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A Song to Keep: A Kinship of Poems and Drawings

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£ 9.99 
This title will be released
May 1, 2021
- pre-order today! 

A collection of poems set against the backdrop of the Scottish Highlands, rooted in the experience of growing up in South Africa. The poems explore the challenges of motherhood, marriage and immigration. Olivia says of her poems, ‘while the poems are set within my own cultural background and personal journey, they reflect the experiences of all South Africans who have been faced with the challenge of transcending suffering and loss to find hope, courage and redemption.’

Artist Domenica de Ferranti worked together with Olivia and produced charcoal drawings to complement the poems, which are both metaphysical and modern.

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Release Date |  
May 2021
ISBN | 
9781910895573
Pages | 
112

A Song to Keep: A Kinship of Poems and Drawings

Out of Stock
Portrait of a face on a blue background
No items found.
TRANSLATED BY
£ 9.99 
This title will be released
May 1, 2021
- pre-order today! 

A collection of poems set against the backdrop of the Scottish Highlands, rooted in the experience of growing up in South Africa. The poems explore the challenges of motherhood, marriage and immigration. Olivia says of her poems, ‘while the poems are set within my own cultural background and personal journey, they reflect the experiences of all South Africans who have been faced with the challenge of transcending suffering and loss to find hope, courage and redemption.’

Artist Domenica de Ferranti worked together with Olivia and produced charcoal drawings to complement the poems, which are both metaphysical and modern.

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reviews

One of the most prominent and compelling themes in literature, including poetry, is the longing for home. From the epics of Homer to the “pilgrim soul” of W.B. Yeats, poets have long grappled with our desire for home, as well as the pain that results when we are alienated from it. In A Song to Keep, poet Olivia Findlay joins this long tradition as she explores what it means to have been born in Cape Town, South Africa, during apartheid, and to now live in the Scottish Highlands. As a poet with ancestors from places as varied as Ireland, Mozambique, and India, Findlay’s collection asks the question of where ‘home’ even is when one has such a sprawling family history. It is a query that is surely relevant to more and more of us in our increasingly nomadic age, one in which the reality that we are “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” becomes ever more pronounced. And yet, the longing for some true home persists. Poetry is an ideal medium for wrestling with such tensions and all the paradoxes that arise from them. In A Song to Keep, Findlay’s sometimes sparse but always immersive words create particular images that invite the reader into the experience of not always belonging. Presumably these come from the poet’s rich life in a variety of locations, and yet they manage to stir memories and yearnings that are on some level universal. Findlay’s poems are accompanied by original drawings by London-based artist Domenica de Ferranti. These charcoal sketches of trees, birds, and aging faces bring to mind not only the elements of nature that human beings have encountered for centuries, but also the pervasive emotions and desires of the heart that cut across cultures and landscapes. Nostalgia. Sorrow. Hope. Echoes of the family songs and sagas passed down from generation to generation. In the poem “Interlude,” Findlay writes: Lives are forged, from stories kept, and belief sought, in all that is left, to be said, in the quiet rooms Perhaps that is the question A Song to Keep ultimately asks: “Who will keep our stories alive, no matter where we go?” Perhaps that is a question even more poignant than “Where is home?” especially for those who are either dispossessed of a homeland or simply feel rootless in a thousand small ways as they struggle to navigate this dizzyingly complex world. At the very beginning of Findlay’s collection, the introduction states that “[t]his book honours her grandmother, whose song she keeps.” There is something so essentially human about such a dedication. For it belongs to a tradition that has likely existed for as long as Homo sapiens have walked the earth – the passing on of stories, the keeping of songs, no matter where the pilgrim’s path takes us or how the boundary lines of home are drawn.

– Ashlee Cowles Kirkcenter

more about this title

author

Olivia Findlay

artist

Domenica de Ferranti

about the author
Olivia Findlay was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1973. She lived in Jo’burg and made her mark in the fashion industry in the country. Her first collection of poetry, A Song to Keep, explores themes of loss and longing, belonging and placelessness.
by the author
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about the artist
Trained in Italy and based now from her South London studio, Domenica de Ferranti’s work is mainly sculptural. She uses various materials, predominantly wood and bronze, to explore her understanding of humans, animals and trees as archetypal figures.
illustrated by this artist
‘Blindly Born
Into such a raging life
To walk along eternal
Avenues of unknowing...’

-Yearning

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