What Did the Deep Sea Say? is a new book in development by Marion Coutts (forthcoming from Fern Press/ Vintage, 2026) that tracks the relationship between a mother and her young child as they cross the Atlantic in the aftermath of loss.
Marion Coutts / Fogo Island, 2018
Image Description: a black and white image of the sea, on Fogo Island, Newfoundland. No horizon is visible and the sunlight is coming from the right of the frame.
How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.
Arthur C Clarke
What Did the Deep Sea Say?
What Did the Deep Sea Say? tracks the relationship between a mother and her young child as they cross the Atlantic in the aftermath of loss. It explores measures of distance from near to far: conceptual, temporal, emotional and physical with a focus on the ocean and its borders, islands as metaphorical and physical constraints and coastlines as sites of flux and change.
A shore is a line on a map, an island is a point. The book is divided into three sections: Shore. Home. Island, and structured around oppositions of land and water, horizontal and vertical, the sea and the horizon, intimacy and separation, the visible and the invisible. The title is taken from a folk song made popular by Woody Guthrie, and the writing combines fictional and non-fictional elements with other transdisciplinary approaches, to think about language, landscape, parenthood, photography and ever more fragile ecologies of people and place.
What did the Deep Sea Say? is a highly personal work rooted in visual art research. Written in short, dense chapters, each fronted by an image, the text is formed around a set of black and white photographs of the sea and coastal rock formations taken over a summer spent on Fogo Island, Newfoundland. Rocks feature heavily in the text: volcanic, igneous and sedimentary. From the aesthetics of Minecraft, to Mondrian’s Pier and Ocean, the book draws on a number of images and artworks that call directly to the sea, its representations, dangers, depths and consolations, among them, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled 1991, Rose Finn Kelcey, The Restless Image: a discrepancy between the seen position and the felt position, Jo Spence, The Final Project, Susan Hiller, Rough Seas and the seminal map by Marie Tharp and Bruce Heezen, Tharp and Heezen, Physiographic Diagram of the North Atlantic Ocean 1957.
What Did the Deep Sea Say? is forthcoming from Fern Press/ Vintage, 2026. Learn more about the press here.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled 1991
Image Description: A pile of prints on the floor of an image of dark waters with light reflections.
Marion Coutts is an artist and writer. She has exhibited throughout the UK and internationally, including Helsinki Kunsthalle; Yorkshire Sculpture Park; Chisenhale Gallery, London; The British School at Rome; Project Arts Centre, Dublin. She has held fellowships at Tate Liverpool and Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge. She was a Literature resident at Cove Park, Scotland (2016), the recipient of The Islands Arts Writing Residency, Fogo Island (2018) and a Research Fellow at the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2019). Her first book, The Iceberg, won the Wellcome Book Prize (2015) and was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction (2014) and the Costa Biography Award (2015). Her second book What Did the Deep Sea Say? will be published by Vintage in early 2026. She is a Reader in Art at Goldsmiths and lives in London.
In 2023, Coutts was awarded Dedicated Research Time by Goldsmiths to work on the book. Research has been further supported by the Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; Fogo Island Arts, NL; Arts Metropole, Toronto, CA; Cove Park, Scotland. Published outputs connected to this project include:
2021 Care and Waiting: Critical Poetics: conference and webinar, Nottingham Trent University
2019 Sculpture as Fieldwork: conference/ Visiting Research Fellowship, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
2018 The Islands Arts Writing Residency, Fogo Island Arts, Fogo Island and Arts Metropole, Toronto
2017 Aiming or Hitting, solo exhibition, Tintype, London
2017 Marion Coutts and Denise Riley in conversation, Tintype, London
2016 Cove Park Literature Residency, Cove Park, Scotland
Marion Coutts is represented by Anna Webber at A M Heath
https://amheath.com/authors/marion-coutts
Marion Coutts / Fogo Island, 2018
Image Description: Rocks covered in lichens on Fogo Island, Newfoundland.
