An extraordinary, timely update on the classic Coleridge poem Is it possible to update a masterpiece? Only, perhaps, with a brand-new masterpiece. Written in 1797, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” was the original eco-fable; drawn in 2010, The Rime of the Modern Mariner is a graphic novel, now set in the cesspool of the North Atlantic Garbage Patch—thus adding a timely and resonant message about the destruction of our seas. Hayes’s visually striking debut is drawn with complex, iconic images reminiscent of old woodcuts. Emerging from every exquisite page are the poem’s enduring themes: compassion for nature, a sense of connection among all living things, and rightful outrage at man’s thoughtless destruction of the environment. Powerful and evocative, lush and stark, The Rime of the Modern Mariner will appeal to fans of Habibi and Persepolis.

An extraordinary, timely update on the classic Coleridge poem, now a graphic novel and set in the cesspool of the North Atlantic Garbage Patch--thus adding a timely and resonant message about the destruction of the seas.

A mariner appears on a park bench and begins his tale...Cursed by an albatross he slew whilst hunting whales, the mariner and his crew find themselves stranded within the North Pacific Garbage Patch- a vast, hypoxic, slow-whirling maelstrom of plastic waste; a hidden repository for the world's litter. Along the way, he meets various characters of our current environmental tragedy- a lady made of oil, a deserted ghost-ship drilling barge, a 2-inch salp (the human race's oceanic ancestor), a blue whale and a hermit. Nostradamus, Cassandra, Medusa, Poseidon, Thor, Gaia, Al-Javari, Mephistopheles and a buzzard also make cameo appearances.

Forged in the Dustbowl of the 1930s, in an America crippled by the Great World Recession, this humble man found solace in song, and soon those songs became the voice of the People – men and women who had seen their lives deracinated and destroyed by the vicissitudes of global economic forces beyond their control. Guthrie’s influence lives on, a touchstone for Bob Dylan, The Clash and the protest singers of the Occupy movement today. With a delighted eye, and an ear for a tune, Nick Hayes’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed Rime of the Modern Mariner brings a legend to life with a generous spirit and crackling moral force its subject would have been proud of.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was only twenty-five when he wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, but it turned out to be an astonishingly prescient poem. This tale of a journey that begins in high hopes and good spirits, leads to a profound encounter with darkness, alienation, loneliness and dread, and finally sees its protagonist return home to a renewal of faith and vocation, foreshadowed the shape of Coleridge's own life. Summoning us to join him on a fantastic voyage through Coleridge's life and work, academic, priest and poet Malcolm Guite draws out the uncanny clarity with which image after image and event after event in the poem became emblems of what Coleridge was later to suffer and discover. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is of course more than just one individual's story: it is also a profound exploration of the human condition and, as Coleridge himself explained, our 'loneliness and fixedness' -- a prophetic parable about our place in a natural world that scares us in its immensity but which we assume we can control. Yet the poem ultimately offers hope, release and recovery; and Guite draws out the continuing relevance of Coleridge's life and writing to our own age.