I studied English at the University of York, and after graduation taught English as a foreign language in Finland.Īt around this time I began to write the poems which formed my first poetry collection, The Apple Fall, and to publish these in magazines. I began by listening to and learning by heart all kinds of rhymes and hymns and ballads, and then went on to make up my own poems, using the forms I’d heard. Poetry was very important to me from childhood. You also come to understand very early that stories hold quite different meanings for different listeners, and can be recast from many viewpoints. In a large family you hear a great many stories. My father was the eldest of twelve, and this extended family has no doubt had a strong influence on my life, as have my own children. He pleads with her to ignore her craving for the sea and stay safely in their cottage up on the cliff.īut not only is Sapphy intoxicated by the Mer world, she longs to see her father once more.I was born in December 1952, in Yorkshire, the second of four children. Ingo blood runs strongly in Sapphy and Conor fears she will leave the Air world for good.
She must let go of all her Air thoughts and embrace the sea and all things Mer.Īfter her first visit she is entranced – merely the sound of running water makes her yearn to be in Ingo once more. He takes her to Ingo and introduces her to a world she never knew existed. She goes to the cove to find him, but instead meets Faro, an enigmatic and intriguing Merman.
The following summer her brother Conor keeps disappearing for hours on end. When he is lost at sea she can’t help but think of that old myth she’s convinced he’s still alive. Sapphire’s father told her that story when she was little. She swam up the stream to hear him sing, then one day he swam down it and was never seen again. She fell in love with a human, but she was a Mer creature and so she couldn’t come to live with him up in the dry air. You’ll find the mermaid of Zennor inside Zennor church. Master storyteller Helen Dunmore writes the story of Sapphire and her brother Conor, and their discovery of INGO, a powerful and exciting world under the sea.
0 kommentar(er)
