top of page

From a Refugee of Tristan da Cunha (2007)

Note: This book is available for purchase on Amazon at the following link:

 

Link to purchase on Amazon 

 

 A refugee is someone who is driven out or doesn't fit. By necessity, choice or by nature, the dissenter questions and is skeptical of the answers. The pilgrim may not know what he is looking for, but is unwilling to accept less than he seeks. The voice in these poems wanders from mood to mode, vivid, grandiose or vulgar, enchanted as angry, boisterous and timid in turn. The explorer doesn't try to cover his tracks. He tries to leave footprints in his own mud so that an imperfect person pushing through the underbrush is revealed.

 

The people of Tristan da Cunha, the most remote inhabited archipelago on earth, left their island in 1961 when a long dormant volcano exploded and buried their land in a paroxysm of molten lava. Exiled in Britain, speaking an archaic version of English, they were unable to adjust, and eventually returned to their barren island in the South Atlantic. Their exodus, out and back, serves as the starting point for this exploration of a life in song.

Quantity

bottom of page