Life can be rough out at sea.

Now a local poet and ex-yachtie is lifting the lid on her experience of working aboard the world’s most ostentatious superyachts in a new collection of poems published this month.

Lucy Holme will launch her Patrick Kavanagh Award shortlisted debut chapbook, Temporary Stasis at L’Atitude 51 Wine Bar in Cork city on Wednesday, September 14th.

Inspired by her 13 years working onboard super yachts as a stewardess for the rich and famous, the Kent-born writer’s debut collection follows the trajectory of a girl to womanhood through the prism of the yachting industry,

“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,” Holme told us.

“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.”

It is publication day for this little labour of love, Temporary Stasis. I still have some signed copies to sell & if anyone would like a review copy please DM me 🌊✨⚓️

*I am in front of my ‘girl in blue’ from Nice’s Cours Saleya flea market 💙https://t.co/8ZaktbeIBD pic.twitter.com/PAfFJhWW3M

— Lucy Holme – Roberts (@lucy_holme) August 31, 2022

A book dating back to 1900, 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 explained.

“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.”

Holme is also preparing for the launch of the inaugural issue of the new Irish biannual print magazine, The Four Faced Liar, of which she is founding editor along with Patrick Holloway, Stephen Brophy and Rosie Morris. The first issue will be out in October.

Temporary Stasis is published by Broken Sleep Books and will be launched at L’Atitude 51 Wine Bar in Cork city on Wednesday, 14 September at 7pm.

You can order a copy, €10.20, here.