Martin Shaw

Wolf Milk is Dr Martin Shaw’s reflection on almost two decades leading vigils in the wilderness. Through myth, poetics and hard-won brooding he offers a way for modern people to enter an ancient ceremony. This startling book suggests a wingspan of both mystical experience and civic duty underpins the encounter. “It is your task to walk back from the vigil with an animal, not a pelt, not a corpse, but something alive. Curate that energy, feed it, don’t domesticate it, make culture from it. It should be walking alongside you, not slung over your shoulder. You build your structures from its growls.”

“SHE’S NOT A BRANWEN OR ANGHARAD, SHE’S NOT A LONG ROOTED, LONG VERSED STORY OF LAKE OR HILL, SHE IS A MOVER AND A WAKER AND A SHAKER, A LOOSE-HIPPED ZANZIBAR PRIESTESS OF THE BLOWN FUSE OF THE SACRED EVERYTHING, A PROPHETIC WANDERER, EVEN IF HER MIGRATIONS TAKE CENTURIES TO COMPLETE. SHE IS A GREAT CLATTER-BASH OF GNOSTIC LIGHTNING. WHEREVER SHE IS, SHE CAN REMEMBER A PLACE BEFORE THAT. SHE HAS CHARISMA IN EVERY SETTING. “AND NOW, DUE TO A FASCINATION WITH STREET LIGHTS, SHE IS WALKING THE LANES. THEY ARE A DISAPPOINTMENT. SHE SLEEPS IN A BUS SHELTER. “IN THE MORNING HER MIND IS FULL OF FUR AND LIGHT.” When the gods have love affairs, they unfold over many centuries. A wandering deity - by turns a women, a salmon, and something else entirely that it is difficult to talk about - decides to revive her affections for the ancient Celtic god of the sea, Mannanan Mac Lir, and heads for the shoreline. But on a Welsh beach, she encounters something else: tourists. And none of them think in myth anymore. They utter static and call it language. Unimpressed, she tells an Inuit tale to refresh their minds, to loosen their imaginations. All the time, she is also sending the story as courtship to Mannanan, a story that contains a secret: could it be that this story within a story is actually the tale of their love affair? THE FIVE FATHOMS is part of the Seven Doors in an Unyielding Stone series.

Dramatic new retellings of Celtic poetry’s great lyrics and legendsCinderbiter collects tales and poems originally composed and performed centuries ago in Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, when notions of history and authorship were indistinguishable from the oral traditions of myth and storytelling. In the spirit of recasting these legends and voices for new audiences, celebrated mythologist and storyteller Martin Shaw and award-winning poet Tony Hoagland have created extraordinary new versions of these bardic lyrics, folkloric sagas, and heroes’ journeys, as they have never been rendered before. In long, shaggy tales of the unlikely ascensions of previously unknown heroes such as Cinderbiter, in the shrouded origin stories of figures such as Arthur and Merlin, and in anonymous flickering lyrics of elegy, praise, and heartbreak, these poems retain at once the rapturous, supernatural imagination of the deep past layered with an austere, devout allegiance to the Christian faith. Shaw and Hoagland’s collaboration summons the power within this storehouse of the Celtic mind to arrive at this rare book—distinctive, audacious, and tuned to our time and condition with a convincing resonance.

Master mythologist Martin Shaw uses timeless story-wisdom to examine our broken relationship with the world. There is an old legend that says we each have a wild, curious twin that was thrown out the window the night we were born, taking much of our vitality with them. If there was something we were meant to do with our few, brief years on Earth, we can be sure that the wild twin is holding the key. In Courting the Wild Twin, Dr. Martin Shaw invites us to seek out our wild twin––a metaphor for the part of ourselves that we generally shun or ignore to conform to societal norms––to invite them back into our consciousness, for they have something important to tell us. He challenges us to examine our broken relationship with the world, to think boldly, wildly, and in new ways about ourselves—as individuals and as a collective. Through the use of scholarship, storytelling, and personal reflection, Shaw unpacks two ancient European fairy tales that concern the mysterious wild twin. By reading these tales and becoming storytellers ourselves, he suggests we can restore our agency and confront modern challenges with purpose, courage, and creativity. Courting the Wild Twin is a declaration of literary activism and an antidote to the shallow thinking that typifies our age. Shaw asks us to recognize mythology as a secret weapon—a radical, beautiful, heart-shuddering agent of deep, lasting change.

In this intellectually and politically potent new book, Martin Shaw proposes a way through the confusion surrounding the idea of genocide. He considers the origins and development of the concept and its relationships to other forms of political violence. Offering a radical critique of the existing literature on genocide, Shaw argues that what distinguishes genocide from more legitimate warfare is that the enemies targeted are groups and individuals of a civilian character. He vividly illustrates his argument from a wide range of historical episodes, and shows how the question 'What is genocide?' matters politically whenever populations are threatened by violence. This compelling book will undoubtedly open up vigorous debate, appealing to students and scholars across the social sciences and in law. Shaw's arguments will be of lasting importance.