The Blackheart Orchestra’s Chrissy Mostyn and Jacob Holm-Lupo of White Willow and Donner have collaborated on a prog-poem project with Prog writer Martin Kielty, which is premiered below.
The Ghost Of Terror Bay is inspired by the doomed Franklin Expedition to the Arctic in 1845, which resulted in the deaths of all 129 crew members of the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror over the following years. Kielty discovered an account of Inuk tribesperson who boarded the Terror and met one of the British sailors, who was dying of malnutrition and metal poisoning in the brain, and had resorted to cannibalism in an attempt to survive.
“The story is one of the most incredible accounts of human endeavour in the days when men pitted themselves against the world and weren’t scared to give their lives for the chance to create history,” says Mostyn, who performs the poem. “It’s a beautiful and tragic ghost story, and having always been a lover of ghost stories I enjoyed slipping into the character of the young woman. I filled my ears with the language of the distant seas, the stretching of ropes, the creaking of oak, the bending of the mast against the gale and the screaming of lives lost in the nothingness of the fight against nature to win the unwinnable and to die the unthinkable. Just like the girl, we are left not knowing what really happened to any of the men out there.”
Holm-Lupo wrote the music and produced the track. It’s the second collaboration he and Kielty have released, after launching The Withy – a myth about the creation of Stonehenge – via Prog last year. “I don't think either of us anticipated it would generate quite as much interest as it did,” he said. “We both loved it, of course, and it turns out there are plenty of weirdos like Matin and I out there. The Withy video has already passed 60,000 views – and there's more to come!”
“It took me until a couple of years ago to get over my fear of what people would say when I told them I was aiming to be a poet,” Kielty admits. “But I’m loving it and I find it more challenging and enjoyable than any other writing I’ve ever done. It’s been a long-standing ambition of mine to hear Chrissy perform one of my works, and her interpretation of the character is fascinating because it’s almost exactly opposite to my own. Jacob and I have been working away on a number of similar pieces; to have his talent, experience and appreciation on my side feels like real validation. And like Jacob says, we’re nowhere near finished.”
