Ebb and Flow – Crovie Then and Now began lightly, almost by accident.

It started with a throwaway remark from Darren, a teasing observation that I had already written enough poems to fill several books. That small joke opened the door to longer conversations. We began to talk about making something deliberate, a book that would belong to Crovie alone. Not a collection scattered across themes, but one rooted firmly in a single place, finding a way to connect the village at its working beginnings with the quieter present that remains.

those early poems were shaped together. They grew out of shared evenings, remembered stories, and long discussions about how life once worked here. Darren carried Crovie instinctively; he had lived it, inherited it, and understood it as something practical rather than abstract. The first pages of the book still hold that closeness, that sense of two people thinking through a place they both loved.

Then everything changed.

Darren’s death fractured time and direction in a way no planning can account for. The work stopped, not as a choice, but because the ground it stood on disappeared. For a long while, returning to the book felt impossible. The subject was too bound up with what had been lost, and the voice that had shaped its beginning was suddenly absent.

What brought me back was not ease, but clarity. I reached a point where I understood that Ebb and Flow could not remain unfinished. Continuing it was not only something I wanted to do, but something I needed to do. It became a way of honouring Darren’s life, his deep devotion to Crovie, and the knowledge and care he carried for it. I knew that if I reached into our shared memories, into the life we had spoken about and imagined together, I would find the strength to carry the work through.

My practice, both as an artist and a writer, has always been rooted in people, place, and heritage. This book sits at the centre of that commitment. It is shaped by listening, by memory, and by a respect for lives lived closely with the land and sea. Ebb and Flow is not only a record of Crovie’s past and present, but a continuation of the conversations that first brought it into being.

We live between cliff and water,
where the stones remember every storm.
The year begins with frost and prayer,
with nets to mend, and oars to oil,
and men who look to the east for mercy.

The sea is our wage and our wound.
She gives white fish in their cold, pale gleam,
herring in high summer like poured light
and she takes, without warning,
a son, a brother, a friend.

The women watch from the bank head,
shawls tight against the wind,
counting boats, counting hours.
Their hearts rise and fall
with the line of the sea.

©AnneWiseman2026

Ebb and Flow is a book rooted in one place and the lives shaped by it.

Set in Crovie, a small coastal village on the Moray Firth, this collection brings together poetry, voice and memory to trace how a community has lived with the sea across generations. It listens to the rhythms of work and weather, to seasons of abundance and waiting, to the quiet continuities that remain even as ways of life change.

The poems move between then and now. Fishermen launching boats at first calm sit alongside present-day voices shaped by the same shoreline. What emerges is not nostalgia, nor elegy, but a living portrait of a place that has never been static. The sea gives and takes, the village adapts, and life continues in small, meaningful ways.

This book is about attention. About noticing what endures when the world insists on speed and noise. About shared catches, passed-down skills, and the deep, unspoken knowledge of tide, light and wind. It offers an intimate view of Crovie, but its themes will resonate with anyone who understands the pull of home, work done with care, and a life lived close to the elements.

Pre-ordering Ebb and Flow helps support independent publishing and the telling of local stories that might otherwise be lost. Each copy carries with it the voices of a place, held between land and sea.

Pre-order copies are for paperback only, these can either be collected from the launch event on the 20th of February 2026 held at Gardenstown Dreel Hall from 6pm, Mailed UK at cost or Mailed World Postage at cost.

Paperback copies are £12.95 each and payable at time of ordering.

To pre-order your copy email Anne@Croviestudio.co.uk