Tony Wailey’s latest book, Lights Bearing West, is about memory, place and distance, messages sent, delivered, picked up, put down, kept or discarded. Going away, having adventures and coming home, whether these adventures are first hand or tenth hand, is part of everyone’s trilogy in Liverpool – even for those who have never left the river.
“Trace elements of ancestral blood, Guiness, and the salt of seas and rivers saturate these pages, a document of vast oceans, heartbreak, demented docklands and night visions of Valparaiso… Tony Wailey has a maritime soul and the romantic heart of a poet, and his beauty of a book is a waterfront archive of restless memory and unforgotten ghosts.” – Jeff Young, author of Ghost Town: A Liverpool Shadowplay.
“Lights Bearing West pulsates with the experience, trauma and joy of lives spent at sea. Through vivid personal stories of seafaring work, of connections forged between different places and of union struggles, Tony Wailey brings to life past maritime worlds in ways that speak to crucial contemporary political questions and concerns.” – David Featherstone, Professor of Political Geography, University of Glasgow
Tony will be signing copies of Lights Bearing West.