John Seymour wrote thirty books and numerous articles on land and money reform, the good life and the forgotten arts and crafts of self-reliance. John spent the summer of 1994 celebrating his 80th birthday…retreating between parties to his homestead in Ireland to milk cows in the morning and impart skills in self-sufficiency in the afternoon.

Connie Lindqvist was born in Finland in 1950, spending her formative years amidst Lapps, reindeer and fir trees. She was the only female skipper of a gaff-rigged vessel cruising the French and English Channel coasts and the owner of a design studio in Rye that created monumental ceramic panels for the shopkeepers of Knightsbridge.

In 1993 I put on my publisher’s hat and brought together my old political colleague and my new acquaintance for Rye From the Water’s Edge. John took one look at Connie’s illustrations for the book and wrote that ‘as a marine artist Connie was beyond compare, her boats and her sea really feel like boats and sea’…adding for good measure that ‘if ever Connie needed something to do he might try to persuade her to illustrate some sea-poems I have written’.

As a publisher I immediately disowned the project on the grounds that ‘nobody made money from poetry books’…remarks that can be found on Page 67 of the first edition of Seymour’s Seamarks published in 500 examples by Academic Inn Books in Spring 1995.

The book is now out of print after being sold directly to the public at £4.95 each by AIB’s two Sales Agents John Seymour and Connie Lindqvist…and producing £600 profit for the three of us.

In my Few Words I went on that ‘…even Rudyard Kipling would be hard pressed to find a publisher nowadays. Yet here are John’s sea-poems…and illustrated by Connie Lindqvist. How does the old codger do it? Old Head of Kinsale was rejected in a vain attempt to shipwreck the project…yet it survived.'

'My mistake was forking out in November 1993 to send Connie across to Ireland. Over booze and baccy the conspiracy was hatched. Perhaps real poetry will start to make a comeback with this volume of Seymour’s Seamarks? You bought a copy after all!’

Seymour’s Seamarks starts with a warning to the reader that ‘the poet takes no responsibility for any shipwrecks caused by pilots using this volume as a Pilot’s Guide’ and then includes the following dozen poems: Cape Comorin; Roaring Middle; Pelican Point; Danger Point; Tusker; Galloper; Strumble Head; St Govan; Old Head of Kinsale; Spurn; Swin Spitway and Hook.

In the acknowledgements thanks is given to B.D. Thynne, Head of Hydrography in the Charts Department of the Greenwich National Maritime Museum ‘for his courtesy and enthusiasm. The risk to mariners from this little book would have been much greater without his help.’ Nonetheless approach these headlands with care, charts and a good Pilot and don’t drink any alcohol…including Weakbow Cider…before disembarkation.

Goethe once said ‘In boldness is genius’. He might have added but didn’t that it also contains the seeds of failure. On Page 68 the bold acclamation can be read that Seymour’s Seamarks was the first of a series of books of illustrated verse by John Seymour.

These Forthcoming Books were recklessly listed with illustrator and publication dates: Summer 1995 Jolly Boys in the Coats of White with Kate Seymour; Winter 1995 Animals Talk Back with Connie Lindqvist; Summer 1996 My Old Man with Mike Avery and Winter 1996 Dancing Leaves with Sally Seymour.

Ten years on all this has yet to take place though both Jane and Sally Seymour have completed their assignments, Connie was part of the way through the more ambitious publishing plan for Animals Talk Back at the time of her death and Mike Avery is available to complete his assignment after having shown how good he is.

A budget of £10 000 would suffice to take the project out of mothballs and put it back on track. There is a Complete Book of John Seymour’s Illustrated Verse (without the illustrations)…funded by Teddy Goldsmith…available as an Adobe pdf file or as a bound A4 book. This will be sent to potential sponsors on receipt by Academic Inn Books, P.O. Box 36, Rye, Sussex TN31 7WP of £25 or $50 and a letter indicating the nature of their interest.

In Seymour’s Seamarks John Seymour writes that he had never seen the Old Head of Kinsale from the sea but he had by land. ‘It’s a headland sticking out into the Atlantic foam from Ireland’s south-west coast. It was often the first landfall mariners had on the voyage home from the Americas.’