Sea Poems

Publisher: Seafarer Books, £11.95
Publication Date: 2005

The author, Bob Crew, claims in one of his poems that:
‘This is a book for seafarers all
Who respond to the irresistible call
Of the sea, whether full or part time,
As they take to the whispering and secret brine
That has such an intriguing story to tell
As the oceans roar and swell’.

He describes his book as a ‘hands-across-the-sea anthology of British and American poetry’ and includes ‘a goodly number’ of his own poems in conjunction with those of John Masefield, Longfellow, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Herman Melville. There is a section on the Battle of Trafalgar which he describes as ‘informative, openly conversational, journalistic poetry’, two further sections containing outgoing and extrovert poems and those of a more introspective nature and a final section in which the poets are viewing the sea from the land.

Each section has an introduction in which the compiler construes on the choices he has made and their literary merit.

Bob Crew justifies the inclusion of his own poems as filling in the gaps that exist in the history of English language sea poetry. In putting his poems alongside those of some of the great poets he must expect to be judged accordingly. Certainly some of his poetry is quirky and would not be to everyone’s taste in their bunkside library but there are some nuggets in and among. - PKC