Taking the Snakes Back to Ireland: sell-out events and a secret book
A magical wild week in Ireland filled with poetry, story and music saw all events sold out and an article in the Irish Times. And as he travelled across Ireland, Martin left 50 copies of his latest book Bardskull, an edition that can’t be bought with no ISBN number, in copses, under stones, by raggedy little wells, in shopping centres, taverns and rivers - each copy a snake attempting to return to Ireland. Says Martin: “There’s older ways to enter Ireland than ferry tickets or passport waggles,
Wolf Milk: first copies signed and posted
The first few hundred copies of Wolf Milk: Chthonic Memory in the Deep Wild, Dr Martin Shaw’s latest book about wilderness rites of passage, have been posted out by the team at Cista Mystica Press. The pre-ordered copies have all been personally signed by the author and are making their way to destinations all over the world. This book offers Martin’s reflections on 20 years of leading vigils in the wilderness, a way for modern people to enter an ancient ceremony through ‘myth, poetics and hard-won brooding’. Billl
We Are In The Underworld And We Haven’t Figured It Out Yet
An essay by Dr Martin Shaw As both a mythologist and wilderness rites-of-passage guide I am frequently asked to comment on climate change, collapsing stories, and what on earth to say to our kids about the future. I am no kind of pundit, so choose my words sparingly and carefully. What follows is a few thoughts. *** The real horn being blown at this moment is one some of us simply cannot hear. Oh, we see — the endless television clips of crashing
The Wild Twin
Fairy tales tell us that we were born with a secret twin, a wild twin, and on the hour of its birth it was sent into exile, abandoned in the forest. That a good life is one that seeks them out. Who is the wild twin? I first caught the perfume of my wild twin by walking with muddy boots though wet grasses to my scrubby woodland den as a six year old. As the trees swirled I caught a scent and started to cry without understanding. I
Chthonic Memory in the Deep Wild
Martin is just finishing up a new book on wilderness rites of passage, due out in September 2019. This is not a book for everyone, he says, but he hopes it's of use to one or two. Here are a few lines from the introduction: *** Winter gods lope the forest Strike you with their wolfskin glove And the counterfeit life Takes its carrion demands Back to the blue deceits Of the one who first folded you. I trust words like that more than therapy talk, or
The Night Wages Extract
And as she sleeps he talks to himself, that old abiding friendship. In a brownstone in New York City, he once dreamt that a fairy tale was a kind of breast milk from the earth to us humans. A song-line that pours troublesome nutrition into our pretending-to-be-modern hearts. So all day long he thinks about this. That afternoon in Brooklyn it rains so hard you can barely walk upright, so he shelters in the doorway of a dive bar scrawling what he just thought on a napkin. The
Mud and Antler Bone: An interview with Martin Shaw
Emergence Magazine, Mud and Antler Bone: An interview with Martin Shaw. (Recorded 2018). https://bit.ly/mud-and-antler-bone