“Alone, alone, all, all alone.” The cry of the Ancient Mariner, immortalised by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, feels particularly apposite today as the world self-isolates. Now the 18th-century poem is set to be reimagined, in a daily online reading by stars from Marianne Faithfull to Iggy Pop, Jeremy Irons and Tilda Swinton for a world audience in lockdown.

The Ancient Mariner Big Read, which launches on Saturday and was commissioned by The Arts Institute at Plymouth University, will see the 150-verse poem divided into 40 readings, with readers from Faithfull to Irons each recording three or four verses to be broadcast daily for free. (Faithfull recorded it before being hospitalised with the coronavirus.) The project will combine the readings with works from major artists including Marina Abramović, and refocus on the poem’s “urgent ecological message”.

“We had no idea that we would be pulling this together as all of this happened,” said co-curator Philip Hoare, author of Leviathan or, The Whale, winner of the 2009 Samuel Johnson prize. But Hoare said that the Ancient Mariner Big Read would offer “a brand-new digital work of art to be experienced at home – in a wild voyage into the unknown and watery world”.

Coleridge’s poem opens as the Ancient Mariner collars a reluctant Wedding Guest and begins telling him about a disastrous sea voyage. After the Mariner kills an albatross, his ship becomes becalmed. As Coleridge writes, in some of the most famous lines in poetry, the vessel lies “as idle as a painted ship / Upon a painted ocean”, with “Water, water, every where, / Nor any drop to drink.”

The Mariner is forced to wear the albatross around his neck, and is the only survivor when the ship is visited by a boat bearing Death, prompting his famous cry: “Alone, alone, all, all alone, / Alone on a wide wide sea!” – a section which is taken on, dramatically, by Faithfull for the Big Read.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Shallow End by Glenn Brown, one of 40 artists’ images that will be shown each of the 40 readings. Photograph: Glenn Brown

“It’s the first modern work of literature to address the idea of isolation, in the most intense and visceral and scary, but yet strangely uplifting way,” said Hoare. “The Mariner’s cri de cœur of ‘alone, alone’ is part of us now.”

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is “a founding fable of our modern age”, he said. “We are the wedding guests, and the albatross around the Mariner’s neck is an emblem of human despair and our abuse of the natural world. Yet in its beautiful terror there lies a wondrous solution: that we might wake up and find ourselves saved.”

Hoare is curating the project with artist Angela Cockayne and Sarah Chapman, director of the Arts Institute. The three previously worked together on the Moby-Dick Big Read, which saw figures including David Cameron and Stephen Fry join forces to read the entire novel aloud. It has gathered more 10m hits since first being broadcast in 2013.

Other contributors to the Coleridge read will include Hilary Mantel and Lemn Sissay, each chosen because they have a backstory that reacts with the poem, said Hoare.

Iggy Pop, for example, delivered a “roaring, graphic, growling” reading: “He is the modern Ancient Mariner. He even looks like he’s been on a raft in the Pacific for six months. And he brings his own story – let’s face it, he had his own drug issues, as Coleridge did.” More major names will be revealed as the project progresses.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Medusa West by Yinka Shonibare, another of the artworks in the project. Photograph: Yinka Shonibare

The readings will be accompanied with work by artists including Yinka Shonibare, and paired with relevant scientific research in fields including marine science and climate breakdown. Once the poem is complete, it will be accompanied by a soundscape from electronic musician Jay Auborn, featuring field recordings of albatrosses and creaking ice from the Antarctic.

“Although written 200 years ago, the Mariner is more pertinent than ever, forewarning us at our own peril about the abuse of nature, and how we are all interconnected,” said Cockayne, a lecturer at Bath Spa University.

She pointed to the “prophetic but eternally hopeful” ending to the poem, later used in the well-known hymn, in which the Mariner advises the Wedding Guest: “He prayeth well, who loveth well / Both man and bird and beast. // He prayeth best, who loveth best / All things both great and small.”

“This contemporary voyage draws together a talented interdisciplinary crew, working in film, photography, drawing, painting, and sculpture,” said Cockayne. “The outcome is breathtaking, a circular journey of loss, grief and retribution but also one of hope for our troubled times.”