I’ve been reflecting on a recent trip to Greece, where I joined the London Literary Salon to read Homer’s Odyssey on the island of Agistri. I keep returning to the question: why a travel study?
Something shifts when we step away from the familiar. The ferry across the Aegean marked the beginning of that shift, old friends and new chatting in the wind, all of us quietly wondering what we were heading toward. When we arrived at Rosy’s seaside sanctuary, it became clear: this wasn’t a holiday. It was an immersion.
Each morning began with gentle yoga by the sea—our plank pose held for the span of a Shakespeare sonnet in call-and-response—then voice work with Jane to ground us in breath and sound. Evenings were for sharing food, ideas, and laughter. And in between, we read. Two-hour sessions with Toby guiding us through The Odyssey, supported by Caroline’s curated contemporary poems and insights.
Together, we travelled with Odysseus, Penelope, Telemachus, and Athena. We discussed betrayal, resilience, grief, longing, hospitality. And always, we circled back to the question: what does it mean to come home? We read The Odyssey because its themes endure, and because we endure. Penelope waits and weaves; we know what that feels like. Odysseus is clever, flawed, and longing for home, and so are we.
I had the chance to facilitate a writing session and some casual weaving. We wrote in response to the theme “I Am From”, tracing the threads of our own stories of home. We wove yarn onto rocks, creating patterns from whatever materials we had to hand.
We climbed to old churches, tasted pistachios, swam in the cold, cold sea (yikes!). We weathered wind and rain, and stood under the sun to share poems: Sappho, Cavafy, Homer, the Pope’s final letter. The youngest among us, a recent classics graduate, read in ancient Greek. The oldest read aloud from her own work.
I stood before the group to read my Penelope monologue, a piece begun for my MSc dissertation and shaped anew by the island. The sea stretched out behind me like a quilt of blues. I heard my voice—its uncertainty, and its emerging strength.
This is the kind of experience I never want to underestimate. The richness of connection, to story, to self, to nature, to each other, is something to return to, again and again. Increasingly, research supports what the Greeks knew all along: art is good medicine. And during this week, the poetry of Homer brought us together.
We walked, read, made, wrote, listened, shared. We disassembled and reassembled stories, our own and Homer’s. And by the end, I realised I hadn’t just travelled away. I had travelled toward something. Toward the part of myself that is most at home: in language, in community, in curiosity.
So, coming home isn’t always about returning to where you started. Sometimes it’s about recognising yourself more fully when you get there.
See more images from Agistri on our Gallery page.
