The Selkie's Song
Paul, Nalini (2026) The Selkie's Song. Three Rivers Festival, Scotland.
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| Creators/Authors: | Paul, Nalini |
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| Abstract: | My three poems, entitled collectively The Selkie’s Song, bring together (possibly for the first time) the selkie myth and figures from India’s history. The selkie myth is found in Orkney, Shetland, and in various Celtic and Norse cultures. The themes concerning liminality, a lack of belonging, a search for identity and home, all connect with my research interests around postcolonial theory. Homi Bhabha’s notion of the ‘third space’ connects to the selkie’s sense of belonging to both the land and the sea (taking both human and seal form); and an awareness of not belonging wholly to either place or landscape/seascape. Bhabha’s ‘third space’ concerns the migrant’s experience of leaving their homeland, moving to a new place, and taking with them their memories and sense of cultural and/or national identity (from the ‘motherland’); but losing that initial place (e.g., Saidya Hartman’s ‘Lose Your Mother’), having left it physically. Yet the migrant continues to identify with their original homeland in their new place of residence. They do not fully belong to the new country to which they have moved; but instead create something hybrid, which is the ‘third space’: it seeks to attain belonging in both and neither, simultaneously, as something in-between or interstitial. My poems explore this liminality and how it might offer a ‘third space’, with the selkie myth acting as a ‘bridge’ between fixed notions of ‘East’ and ‘West’; land and sea, memories and present-day reality. Powerful female figures from India’s history are evoked as a ‘writing back’ to narratives of victimhood, often prevalent in studies of the colonised ‘other’. These include Jindan, a queen and mother of Maharajah Duleep Singh (whose son is buried at Kenmore Parish Church, Scotland); and Nur Jahan, a powerful medieval empress. |
| Official URL: | https://www.threeriversfestival.co.uk/ |
| Output Type: | Other (Three poems written with liminality and the 'third space' in mind, using the Scottish/Norse selkie myth as a 'bridge' between preconceived notions of 'East' and 'West'; and drawing on powerful female figures from India's history.) |
| Additional Information: | I have been commissioned by the Three Rivers Festival, Scotland, to write three poems (responding loosely to the theme of ‘bridges’), and have written and submitted these on 17th March 2026. They will be set to music as a song cycle, by three composers: Jennifer Barker, Eva Smeddle and Greg May, all based in the UK. The song cycle will be performed by chamber music ensemble The Bubblyjock Collective at the Three Rivers Festival on 17th July 2026 at Blair Drummond House, Perthshire. The Bubblyjock Collective are: Neil Sutcliffe (accordion), Rosie Lavery (soprano) and Anna Michels (piano). The commission came as a result of the festival director, Catherine Duncan, knowing and admiring my work as a poet, and I have taken the opportunity to use the selkie myth as the bridge (noted above), in alignment with my own research interests. |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | selkie, liminality, third space, memory, landscape, India, feminism, hybridity, Orkney, forgotten histories, writing back, postcolonial |
| Schools and Departments: | School of Design School of Fine Art |
| Dates: | Date Date Type 17 March 2026 Accepted |
| Status: | Submitted |
| Funders: | Three Rivers Festival |
| Projects: | Three Rivers Festival poetry commission |
| Copyright and Open Access Information: | Copyright of the text is retained by myself as poet. Copyright of the music will be retained by the composers. |
| Output ID: | 10818 |
| Deposited By: | Nalini Paul |
| Deposited On: | 30 Mar 2026 11:09 |
| Last Modified: | 30 Mar 2026 11:09 |

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