Released August 31st, 2024 // 80 pages // 978-1-916938-93-9 // RRP £21.99
 
Orasaigh is a collaboration between poet Steve Ely and photographer Michael Faint, inspired by the landscape around the tidal island of Orasaigh, located on the coast of South Uist at Boisdale.
 
Ely's visionary poem, whilst always remaining anchored in the island, roams widely, exploring a range of themes related to Uist and the wider world — sea level rise, the crisis of the 'sixth extinction', history, culture, politics, conflict, and class. Faint's powerful photographs vividly capture the spirit of the place, creating an independent yet complementary subjectivity.
 
The work of the two artists combines and interacts to produce a uniquely evocative response to a rich and resonant landscape in a work that affirms the vitality and resilience of the human spirit, with the island itself becoming a dual symbol of precarity and hope in the crisis of the Anthropocene.
 
ABOUT Steve Ely & Michael Faint:
 
Steve Ely’s previous publications include a novel, Ratmen, a biography, Ted Hughes’s South Yorkshire, and a dozen books or pamphlets of poetry, including Oswald’s Book of Hours, Englaland, Lectio Violant, The European Eel, Lives of British Shrews, and Eely. He’s been visiting South Uist for fifteen years or so and the landscape around the little tidal island of Orasaigh has become his favourite place on the planet.
 
Michael Faint is a photographer who lives on the Isle of South Uist. Recent solo exhibitions include Innse Gall and Cladach | Shore. Shortlisted for the Sony World Photography Awards, his work is published and exhibited widely.