A Song to Keep

Overview

Striking black and white charcoal drawings balance a page with sculpted poems. A high class, designer, coffee-table book for the soulful and searching. These poems reflect a journey from a past delineated by racism, trauma, and violence towards a present life of peace and intense natural beauty. Permeated with nostalgia and loss; songs of an immigrant community alienated in their own land, but pierced with fierce hope, faith in redemption, and a determination that we should all belong. Artist Domenica de Ferranti produced charcoal drawings to complement the poems, which are both metaphysical and modern. She has worked together with Olivia.

Author Biography

Olivia Findlay was born in Cape Town during South Africa's apartheid years and raised in a Colored community in Durban. Her family were the descendants of "misegenous" relationships, rejected by their own kin, and segregated by government decree. As a young teenager, Olivia was scouted by a model agency and worked in Johannesburg, Cape Town and abroad. Later she married a Scot, and moved to the Scottish Highlands. This is her first collection, a collaboration with London artist Domenica de Ferranti whose drawings respond to the poems.Domenica de Ferranti's work is mainly sculptural. She uses various materials, predominantly wood and bronze, to explore her understanding of humans, animals and trees as archetypal figures.