RESOURCES
Hello friends - I wanted to read a few words from the upcoming Stag Cult this week, more details below. It’s late afternoon with a relentless band of blue sky over the house, and I either go for a run or drink an ice cold beer. Which impulse will prevail? I’m off to Donegal on the midnight ferry in a few days to study Gaelic, eat seafood and enjoy the Irish coast - I’ll be sure to let you know how that goes.
I’m too hot this summer, it must be said. Lots of naps. Or maybe it’s just the kind of clammy heat few of us enjoy. I feel like those toddlers you see flaking out in the street and huffily demanding their mother carry them home. The difference is I’m fifty and have to carry my own sorry shape home these days.
I’ve allowed myself the time in this summer wilting to read Alan Garner’s splendid and masterly compressed new Treacle Walker - small in page count but requiring more than one read. Several sweeps will pay great dividends. There’s an evocative little trailer for it here:
I also wanted to place here one of my all time favourite movies - if not my favourite - Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala. Sip potato vodka, turn off your phone, settle back and let the magic happen.
And here’s a synopsis of Stag Cult:
All gnarled up inside us are people, animals and places. We peer into a bog cauldron and witness a giant, and within him a young girl and within her a hare and within him a salmon. Through this scrying we locate secret histories. In Stag Cult Martin Shaw invites us to adventure with him as he explores, and discovers, the nature of becoming whole. Shaw’s shamanistic bricolage lifts a lantern to a kind of haunting we can’t quite exorcize, or don’t wish to.
To pre-order, please go to the London Review of Books - I’ll also be giving a reading and be in conversation with The Guardian’s Claire Armitstead on Mon October 3rd:
Martin Shaw and Claire Armitstead
and pre-order:
Some conversation below with Mark at Benburb Priory (where I’ll be with Paul Kingsnorth on 26th November).
Wishing you well, wherever you are and however you are spending August.
Good cheer,
Martin
