A Night Sea Journey

Book excerpt: A Night Sea Journey In this latest collection Adrian G R Scott has drawn on his experience of the physical and mental breakdown which he suffered three and half years ago to explore what CG Jung called the night sea journey. In the title poem Adrian writes of a visit to the Accident & Emergency Department of Sheffields Northern General Hospital, suffering from palpitations, as being part of his own night sea journey. In this book he sets up a creative dialogue between his experiences and the stories of mythology and also with other figures who have navigated their own dark ocean passages. He begins with poems that come from before his breakdown celebrating the everyday routines of holidays, marriages and anniversaries, and his sense of coming of age as a poet. These finally culminate in a funeral poem for a friends wife written at the point when his own night sea journey really began. From there he launches into a series of poems charting his entry into darkness and the jaws of physical and mental breakdown. These are poems that come from the belly of the beast and there is also a short fairy tale telling the story of an encounter with a darker part of himself. These lead into poems of recuperation and recovery, poems that draw on such themes as how to befriend and walk with anxiety and depression. Two cycles of poems follow, one reflecting on Francis of Assisi and the other on the artist Vincent Van Gogh. Both had profound night sea journeys and the writer enters into a dialogue with these challenging phases of their lives. The final section is an accommodation with life after breakdown; the poetry of continuation, as life reshapes itself. This last section is imbued with a sense of cautious hope.