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sea-change
An Epic Poem
In their ancient London taxi, Jessica Streeting’s family move east, deep into the Norfolk countryside.
It is 1975 and her father, the Reverend Paul Farnham, has a new position at the church of St Agnes, Cawston. Here they find a world populated by people who embody both the old and new ways of rural life. Children of the soil, whose parents have worked it for generations. The musical ones. The clever ones. The artists, accountants, shopkeepers and publicans. Among it all, their vicar played a role for all people. Admired and adored he strove to buoy his congregation week after week, unwittingly mythologising himself as he went.
The hole he left then, when in a moment he was ripped from the community, was huge.
In this epic poem Jessica revisits that place, for the first time addressing the grief she so quickly suppressed in the manner of the age. She brings to life in heart-breaking clarity a world made by industrious children and their imaginations, until tragedy muted the colours of that golden time.
With a foreword by Stephen Fry – for whom Paul Farnham played an inspirational role – Sea-Change is a book whose potency reminds us not only of the power of shared stories, but also that how they are told can make us all players in their drama.
In their ancient London taxi, Jessica Streeting’s family move east, deep into the Norfolk countryside.
It is 1975 and her father, the Reverend Paul Farnham, has a new position at the church of St Agnes, Cawston. Here they find a world populated by people who embody both the old and new ways of rural life. Children of the soil, whose parents have worked it for generations. The musical ones. The clever ones. The artists, accountants, shopkeepers and publicans. Among it all, their vicar played a role for all people. Admired and adored he strove to buoy his congregation week after week, unwittingly mythologising himself as he went.
The hole he left then, when in a moment he was ripped from the community, was huge.
In this epic poem Jessica revisits that place, for the first time addressing the grief she so quickly suppressed in the manner of the age. She brings to life in heart-breaking clarity a world made by industrious children and their imaginations, until tragedy muted the colours of that golden time.
With a foreword by Stephen Fry – for whom Paul Farnham played an inspirational role – Sea-Change is a book whose potency reminds us not only of the power of shared stories, but also that how they are told can make us all players in their drama.
- GenresPoetry
151 pages, Hardcover
Published November 1, 2021
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45 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 20, 2022
Because people who write about Norfolk will always say sky
“There is always sky” said my sister
“Why mention sky”
Then we moved and saw that
Sky takes up space in Norfolk
Important, the sky
This book is I already suspect, despite it being mid January, one of the very best I will read in 2022.
Published late in 2021 it is an absolutely beautiful (in both form and substance) novella length autobiographical free form poem by Jessica Streeting. In 1975 her father, the Reverend Paul Farnham, having been a chaplain at a mental hospital on the outskirts of Oxford, moves his family (wife and two daughters) to the Norfolk country parish of Cawston and its church of St Agnes (http://www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/caws... with its stunning interior famous most of all for the angels in its hammer beam roofs), as well as (at least for a period while a new vicarage is built) its sprawling vicarage. His move is partly following a dream.
While the children revel in “garden, fields, space ……..and sea and sky” (see opening quote), Jessica’s father throws himself into the parish, organising a choir open to all and acting as an inspiration and mentor to young people (Stephen Fry who writes a moving forward to the book being one example), but tragedy awaits.
The poem is written many years later as the author revisits the church and its neighbouring vicarage where she encounters an angelic robin as she looks back on her time in Cawston and on the events before, during and after the death of her father.
And really the writing is exceptional in the way it revisits unlocked memories and explores grief and mourning – how it was processed in a different age and time and how it still impacts now.
The superbly produced book is published by Propolis – the publishing imprint of the independent Norwich bookshop The Book Hive (the founder of which – Henry Layte - was involved in the publication of “A Girl is a Half Formed Thing” as then co-founder of Galley Beggar). I bought it from another Norfolk independent bookshop – Holt Bookshop.
As a final note, I have a Norfolk barn in the parish of Heydon just a few miles north of Cawston and which now comes under the team Vicar based at Cawston. Every month I receive the Cawston and District Messenger (a parishes magazine) and I happened – after reading the book - to see in the May 2020 edition that the author of this book and her sister joined the Easter 2020 service online in memory of their father in what I think may have been the 40th anniversary of his death
And how do you shout about death in the sea
When even a whisper disturbs ……
It is too much
We would lose the balance of our minds
Without the guard that comes down to protect us
We would be flooded
Our minds would drown in the sea
One way is writing perhaps?
And one way is music.
Music endures like
Immortal hearts.
Golden wires touch our heart strings
Speak
Unbearable pain-joy
And memory
Spills from our soles
As we sing
February 25, 2022
Our world began with Dad's dream.
Life woke us up through a dream and our childhood became
Garden, fields, space
And more garden
And sea.
Music and play and more fields and more music
And sea
And sky.
Because people who write about Norfolk will always say sky.
“There always is sky,” said my sister.
"Why mention sky?"
Then we moved and saw that
Sky takes up more space in Norfolk.
A memoir in broken prose in tribute to the author's father, a Norfolk-based vicar who drowned in a freak sailing accident when she was 17.
Beautifully written but somewhat parochial, and the most interesting plot line wasn't followed up:
“Norfolk angels wear feathery breeches
You know.”
“Do they, Dad? Like the Wombles?”
A more appreciative review
Life woke us up through a dream and our childhood became
Garden, fields, space
And more garden
And sea.
Music and play and more fields and more music
And sea
And sky.
Because people who write about Norfolk will always say sky.
“There always is sky,” said my sister.
"Why mention sky?"
Then we moved and saw that
Sky takes up more space in Norfolk.
A memoir in broken prose in tribute to the author's father, a Norfolk-based vicar who drowned in a freak sailing accident when she was 17.
Beautifully written but somewhat parochial, and the most interesting plot line wasn't followed up:
“Norfolk angels wear feathery breeches
You know.”
“Do they, Dad? Like the Wombles?”
A more appreciative review
March 27, 2024
This is a beautiful and touching ode to a father. The imagery of an idyllic childhood that Streeting creates in so few words is impressive. I could almost see the hazy golden sheen of before and the turbulent greys of after.
December 1, 2021
I usually struggle with poetry, if I'm honest. Not poetry's fault, I freely admit, but mine.
Sea-change, however, is something quite magical. Accessible, emotional, moving, beautiful and devastating. One of the most moving accounts of loss I've ever read. And yet, somehow so life-affirming too.
I was watching the new Wes Anderson last night and it got me thinking about how Anderson deals with death. It's always portrayed, even when premature and violent, as a natural part of life and in some ways it's the thing that gives life, and love, its significance, its value, its beauty. Death hurts because we love, and that's how it should be. There is strange comfort in that. And that's how I felt reading this book. It wouldn't be a tragedy if it wasn't so wonderful in the first place.
This really is a remarkable book.
Sea-change, however, is something quite magical. Accessible, emotional, moving, beautiful and devastating. One of the most moving accounts of loss I've ever read. And yet, somehow so life-affirming too.
I was watching the new Wes Anderson last night and it got me thinking about how Anderson deals with death. It's always portrayed, even when premature and violent, as a natural part of life and in some ways it's the thing that gives life, and love, its significance, its value, its beauty. Death hurts because we love, and that's how it should be. There is strange comfort in that. And that's how I felt reading this book. It wouldn't be a tragedy if it wasn't so wonderful in the first place.
This really is a remarkable book.
November 30, 2021
Heart-breaking and utterly beautiful
July 24, 2022
This is a truly amazing account of a rural childhood rudely interrupted by tragedy. Do not be intimidated by the epic poem genre, as Sea-change reads like a dream; almost like vignettes and microfiction. A beautiful story told spectacularly. This will stay with me for a long time.
(Extra note: I had the pleasure of being able to listen to the author read her work from the book's setting of Cawston church and it made this memorable book even more compelling.)
(Extra note: I had the pleasure of being able to listen to the author read her work from the book's setting of Cawston church and it made this memorable book even more compelling.)
May 27, 2022
"you okay, darling?"
"I forgot the coffin was there"
Mum hugged me,
The well-wishers
Looked on so knowingly.
They don't know anything actually
So they can fuck off.
It was just a coffin
He wasn't there
No big deal
What a treat reading this beautiful book has been.
"I forgot the coffin was there"
Mum hugged me,
The well-wishers
Looked on so knowingly.
They don't know anything actually
So they can fuck off.
It was just a coffin
He wasn't there
No big deal
What a treat reading this beautiful book has been.
March 6, 2023
Oh this poem was beautiful. Beautiful and heart-breaking and joyful. A perfectly flawed portrait of parents and children, of the fun and uncertainty of childhood and the shock and self-crystallisation of growing up.
So unusual and refreshing and well worth reading.
So unusual and refreshing and well worth reading.
January 28, 2022
Indescribably beautiful.
February 2, 2022
Heartbreakingly, hauntingly beautiful. The imagery and the metaphors are captivating. Jess has given the world a gift by sharing a piece of her story and a piece of her heart. Bravo.
January 2, 2024
“How do you say what a Dad is? Measure the lack of one/ Over a lifetime”.
A beautiful and haunting experience. So glad I got around to reading this. Such a powerful homage.
A beautiful and haunting experience. So glad I got around to reading this. Such a powerful homage.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews