To Hear the Heart, to Hear the Sea - Paul Fearne

This is a short novel written in poetic prose. Having said that, it has no narrative, nor main characters. It is a work of sustained poetic prose. Regularly it returns to the same motif - When we hear the heart, and when we hear the sea, we are hearing the same thing. And, as we discover, there are many ways to go about doing that - for instance we could have a stethoscope, and drive to the sea. We could then apply the stethoscope to our chest, and get out of the car, and go down to the sea, thereby getting a sense of what this phenomenon is like.

The structure of the book also lends itself to this motif. Chapters of long stanzas, and chapters of alternat shorter stanzas, give the book a sensation of pulsation, much like a heart, much like the sea.

But the book is broader than that, as you will discover. Many of Fearne's recent books are written in poetic prose, but they are all addressed to 19^th century poets. This book is more at liberty to resonate poetically. It uses assonance, and indeed rhyme, but on the whole, it is written in blank verse.

Paul Fearne is a writer living and working in Melbourne, Australia. During his Bachelor of Arts at Melbourne University, he experienced a psychosis. He kept a diary during that time. He went on to do a masters and then a PhD. His first book, his diary, was launched at the 2010 Melbourne Writers Festival In 2023, after much work in the field, and many books published, Fearne went into remission. During the lockdown years of the covid pandemic, Fearne regularly was a guest on the Brainwaves radio show. He spoke about 19^th century poets he had written books on.