New chapbook shines a light on the yachting industry

A Cork-based poet will next week launch her debut chapbook (small bound publication) inspired by her 13 years working onboard super yachts as a stewardess for the rich and famous.

Lucy Holme’s debut collection called ‘Temporary Stasis’ follows the trajectory of a girl to womanhood through the prism of the yachting industry.

She said: “The yachting industry is a place that, for a young person, can provide freedom and independence but which can also be politically and socially problematic.

“The stories are not only my own, but the stories of many women I encountered during years working and living at sea, forging lives in often inhospitable circumstances, trying to carve careers, and make sense of an industry with such huge social and economic disparity at its centre.”

Holme, who was born in Kent, a book dating back to 1900 that she unearthed in a charity shop titled ‘Hundreds of Things a Girl Can Make’ also served as inspiration for many of the poems. “It is an instruction manual for domesticity listing examples of handicraft specifically for girls,” she said. “I sort of reflexively started erasing parts of each chapter and then finding these ominous poems underneath. The small vignettes worked extraordinarily well alongside my seafaring poems and added to the idea I was developing about containment and escape.”

“I hope that even without a nautical background, readers might find something in the poems that speaks to them about the nature of loneliness, of growing up and not knowing any of the rules, of the roles we play, and the complicated feelings that distance and solitude can bring. All set against an overarching backdrop of an endless ocean world where borders and delineations are constantly moving.”

The launch will take place in L'Atitude 51 Wine Bar on 14 September at 7pm. Those looking to attend can RSVP by emailing lucyeventsrsvp@gmail.com.