Following a visit to Dartmoor, where he and Martin Shaw walked the River Dart, poet, singer-songwriter, priest and academic Malcolm Guite reflects on how some words of CS Lewis in the dark days of 1939 might guide us through the darkness of 2022.
Hundreds of Dr Martin Shaw's latest book Tristan and Isolde were posted out on February 14th, all personally signed by the author. This first volume of a new major body of work that Shaw has been creating over the past few years, was officially launched from his writing den on the edge of Dartmoor on Valentine's Day. Based largely within the Celtic fringe of Britain, Tristan and Isolde is a dazzling exegesis of love, both disarmingly psychological and profoundly mythological. Shaw’s version heightens the latent Dionysian tensions and
Dartington Arts School catch up with storyteller and Poetics of Imagination lecturer Dr Martin Shaw ahead of his retelling of the classic Irish myth The Pursuit of Dermot and Grainne at Dartington. A princess with wolf blood in her veins chooses love over protocol and a kingdom erupts. This electrifying tale is a hinge between the end of the pagan age and the beginning of the Christian. Thrilling, funny, heartrending, and complex, we are flung headlong into the exhilaration of an ancient story, telling us something directly about
A brand new subscription newsletter has just been launched by Dr Martin Shaw - The House of Beasts & Vines. There will be regular free tasters, but for just $7 per month (around £5), subscribers will get exclusive access to new material and everything in the vault as it builds up. The newsletter will be published on the platform Substack, with fortnightly offerings from Martin, including fresh essays and audio recordings. It promises to be part care package, part spiritual provocation. Says Martin: "Imagine we’re sitting in my
Cista Mystica is delighted to announce the release of a new series of books, starting February 2022 with Martin Shaw’s version of Tristan and Isolde. This is the first volume from a major body of work Shaw has been working on over the past few years. From the primordial caves of antiquity and up through the pagan imagination and Christian mysticism, Shaw wanders centuries, stories and ideas that reconsecrate our relationship to a living earth. Based within the Celtic fringe of Britain, Tristan and Isolde is a standalone
New Year message from Dr Martin Shaw: Joe Strummer once told me not to lose a sense of the heroic. Not in some overbearing, strutting, macho manner, but in a quieter, more vocational register. That certain beautiful things needed defending, and that itself was an organising principle in the scattergun chaos of these times. That you figured out what you stood for. You set free a little morality but held back on the judgement. I’m not someone that peddles in despair or stirs up disorder and claims it
Poet, activist and men's work pioneer Robert Bly died on 21 November 2021 at the age of 94. In part one in a series of conversations with some of the people who knew him intimately Martin Shaw shares memories and stories of Bly. (Nov 2021). Listen to the interview.
By film-maker Bobby Bailey.
Reclaiming the imagination, Martin Shaw untangles our collective selves from the menace of unconscious living. As mythologist and wilderness rites leader extraordinaire, Martin invites us to leave the smoke hole open… Interview with host Robin Claire. (May 2021).