Freedom Song

Posted: Monday Apr 30, 2018

Emma Farry’s Freedom Song is a powerful and beautiful panacea for the world we live in. It’s a go-to book in times of trouble and a tool to enable more harmony and peace in your life. The book’s simple message –love conquers all – is both confronting and inviting in its delivery.

Supporting this timely message is the phenomenal artwork of Ewan Macdogall which opens the book up to a whole new audience. It is a meaningful musing on life as well as striking coffee table/art book with a soulful message.

Freedom Song, like many of the best books,took a long time to come to fruition. When Emma was 25 years old she worked on a television documentary that looked at the real life stories of those living in the kind of poverty and violence depicted in ‘Once Were Warriors’. One woman’s story, about her baby’s death at the hands of her partner,and the strange detachment from her own tragedy, affected Emma deeply.

That night she woke in the small hours and wrote the first draft of what was to become Freedom Song. The poem has been an emotional touchstone for her ever since. She and her husband were living in the West Village of downtown New York at the time of 9/11, and their lives were turned upside down. Again she turned to the words of Freedom Song to make sense of the panic and fear around her.

The poem returned with them to New Zealand and when her sons were old enough to understand its message she read it to them. In 2010 while living near Dunedin she saw an exhibition of Ewan McDougall’s painting at Gallery De Novo. She knew right away that she had found the collaborator for her poem.

Freedom Song is a rare offering; a large format, handsome hardback book with poetry that centres and soothes and original illustrations from an internationally recognised artist.

Reminiscent of Maya Angleou’s Life Doesn’t Frighten Me At All, the book is a testament to simple truths which can sometimes be forgotten in our confusing world. Freedom Song challenges our belief systems, examines the juxtaposition between darkness and light and shows us a way through the madness building in our world. It is unique,surprising, lyrical and thought provoking,with a message that is more relevant today than ever.

Freedom Song will be launched at Dunedin Gallery, De Novo on Saturday, August 4th.

Freedom Song by Emma Farry with illustrations by Ewan McDougall is a large format hardback published in August 2018 priced at $29.99