Imprint: Triarchy Press
Published: 2024
List Price: £12.50
Format: Paperback
Extent: 98pp.
Size: 14 x 21.6 cm
ISBN:  978-1-913743-97-0
Tags: aging, migration, change, soul, resilience, impermanence

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Readership

​This is a book for anyone contemplating their place in a changing world. These essays tie together threads from contemporary politics, ageing and retirement, healing and trauma, homeopathy, soul music, migration and change, marriage and relationship, love and loss - creating a gem of a book that will stir and settle those looking to understand what's going on, within and without.

Soul Moves
​
Sheila Ryan

In the tradition of sociological memoir, Soul Moves explores autobiography in relation to the politics of place. The essays investigate the global shift from ground to chair sitting, falling, moving home, migrating, longshore drift and the fouling of our waters, ageing and retiring, dying and loss, ritual acts, re-constellating marriage, body memory and healing.  

Each essay invites us to consult our own still, quiet voices to re-connect our own moves within a changing world. 

Soul music tracks each essay.
Here is the link to the Soul Moves soundtrack on YouTube - every track mentioned in the book.
“Soul was everywhere in the 60s and 70s. Soul music, soul food, soul sister. I first knew soul in church, where it meant being damned, more or less. Soul music is more about getting on down than rising up to heaven... Soul is moving to the beat – of our hearts as well as to the rhythm of the music. Growing up with soul meant the inner landscape was out there in song. It made you feel known... alive... as if only soul music could see you, knew who you really were, recognised your deepest longings and... told you that you were OK.
 
Fifty years on I begin writing these Soul Moves essays during the five months in which we lived neither here nor there. We are in a camper van, the phone tuned to soul, new and old. It keeps our spirits up and our feet dancing. We are not homeless but between homes. It is an interruptive time. It is an uncertain time wherein doubts and fears could grow. And that most precious thing, a time without belonging, in which new discoveries could be made.”
Sheila Ryan.

Reviews

"I was supposed to be focused on what is currently on the studio wall …a drawing in progress which doesn’t know quite what it wants to be yet. Instead I found myself opening up to the first pages of Soul Moves

….Having long been stuck at change …I am beginning to let go - accept and move forward more gently …paying attention to the small things. Asking myself what I need in any given moment for things to feel right. Trusting my instincts again and trying not to give in to the doubt. I had been hopelessly willing ‘creative flow’ to return, frustrated…no, infuriated that it eluded me. Now however, I’m trying to simply let things unfold in their own good time and because of this simple act of letting go, things are beginning to flow again. I am more open and receptive to those instinctive thoughts once again.

My instinct told me to keep reading….your words and phrases jumping off the page and aligning with my own."
Lisa Wright, Royal West of England Academy

“­ These essays stir the mind and feed the soul.”
Anne Johnson, Everyday Magic Storytelling and author ‘London Tales’ series.

“Always disarmingly, affectingly honest, Soul Moves nimbly, and with great sensitivity, weaves its way through topics such as aging, loss, trauma, the state of modern Britain and the harm we cause the world around us. Yet it is never resigned or pessimistic – instead it moves with a rhythm and an energy as compelling – and sometimes as furious – as the music of its title.”
James Young, writer/translator, National Book Critics Circle Awards ­ finalist

“A wise, engaging and thoughtful collection of essays on navigating change and living with soul.”
Jackie Burgoyne, Fish Flash ­Fiction prize winner

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