Cargo of the Soul: An Anthology of Stories and Poems

Bray seafront meets a garden of white roses. A migrant driver cleans his bus windows and a castaway lover follows new stars. Three sisters covet a tea-set and a stowaway rabbit escapes on the N11. Fresh baked bread hugs a regretful holiday embrace and a cargo manifest reveals a catalogue of carefully boxed units of love and rage.

This is the cargo that washed ashore when eight writers and five photographers joined forces at the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray. This is the cargo of our souls.

SeaScribes is a writing group based in North Wicklow, gathered around the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray. The eight of us who contributed stories and poems to Cargo of the Soul are:

• Alice Sheridan
• Lesley Smith
• Mairead de Bhal
• Taḋg Paul
• Thomas McMahon
• Ian Campbell
• Barbara Murphy
• Naoimh O'Connor

In collaboration with the Bray Camera Club, stunning visual photography makes Cargo a visual experience to behold.

At the centrefold of the book sits "Cargo", a sequence of poems laid out as a freight manifest. The units being counted are intangibles - love, rage, regret, hope - each one a small declaration of what we carry without meaning to, and what we choose to keep. It's meant to be read with the eye as much as the ear. You can take a look at the Cargo sequence in the poetry section of the website, though this one is best experienced in print.

We launched Cargo of the Soul at Bray Town Hall on 5 July 2025 to a packed room. Family, friends, fellow writers and photographers, and a good few curious passers-by filled every seat and then some. Readings, a few quiet tears, and a queue at the signing table that wound back further than any of us had dared hope. We were delighted and quietly overwhelmed.

Cargo of the Soul exists thanks to the support of the Mermaid Arts Centre in Bray, who have backed SeaScribes from the start. Every penny of profit and royalties from the book is donated to the RNLI, the volunteer lifeboat service that keeps watch over our coastline.

• Amazon (paperback, hardback and ebook)
• Apple Books
• Kobo
• Barnes & Noble

Coverage and mentions of Cargo of the Soul:

• Irish Independent, 4 July 2025: "Bray writers group to launch new book in aid of RNLI"
• Greystones Guide, 4 July 2025: "SeaScribes brought to book"
• Irish Times, 21 July 2025: "Writing truth can indeed be stranger than fiction." - Sheila Wayman