Pet Shop Boys star Neil Tennant has lent his voice to an all-star reading of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
The Suburbia star appears in episode 21 of The Ancient Mariner Big Read, established by the University of Plymouth, urging people to reflect on the “first great work of English literature to speak to isolation and loneliness – and the possibility of redemption if we mend our ways.”
Particularly apt considering the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
Iggy Pop, Cerys Matthews, Jeremy Irons, Tilda Swinton, and Chris Packham have also lent their voices to the project. Listen here.
Neil’s verse is as follows:
The loud wind never reached the ship,
Yet now the ship moved on!
Beneath the lightning and the Moon
The dead men gave a groan.
They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise.
The helmsman steered, the ship moved on;
Yet never a breeze up-blew;
The mariners all ‘gan work the ropes,
Where they were wont to do;
They raised their limbs like lifeless tools—
We were a ghastly crew.
For more on the Pet Shop Boys, check out our feature on the brilliant B-sides from their Hotspot era here.
There are also two brilliant Pet Shop Boys radio shows available to listen to here.
