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The Seer Sung Husband

'The Seer Sung Husband' is an epic poem consisting of a series of blank verse sonnets. Set in 1536, it explores tensions between the modern, centralising Tudor state of Henry VIII and the ancient traditions, customs and beliefs of the North of England through a focus on the imagined life of Tobias Shipton, carpenter and husband of ‘Old Mother Shipton’, the celebrated Yorkshire witch and prophetess. This work is informed by a broader interest in the role of popular folklore and mythology in the creative imagining of regional cultural identity. The poem explores the uses of the sonnet in narrative poetry by combining the public history of the epic with the interior voice of the sonnet, a form whose emergence in English is contemporary to the setting of the poem. The prophesies of Ursula Southeil (c. 1488–1561) were first published in the mid seventeenth century and the cave reputed to be her place of birth has been the object of popular tourism in Knaresborough, Yorkshire ever since. Shipton’s life span coincides with the Henrican Reformation and the Pilgrimage of Grace; in this poem her life acts as a focal point for an exploration of the persistence of pre-Christian beliefs and practices in the context of civil upheaval, religious intolerance and the state suppression of witchcraft and heresy. The complex relationship between history and legend is foregrounded though a narrative focus on a character who is secondary to the legend; the unreliable testimony of Shipton’s husband allows for an exploration of the multiplicity of interpretative perspectives on the past. The poem explores parallels between the emergence of the modern state in the Tudor era and contemporary social and political issues through its focus on the impact of war and religious and political persecution on individual and communal identities.