Thursday 10 May 2012

↓ compass point

last night saw the first of a new season of
Salon at Metal, Chalkwell

A Sense of Place: Southend in Fiction

there's history in our small seaside town
it has slipped between the lines of eloquent tomes

and, moreover, if you must go to the sea, it had better not have 
been to South End.  South End is an unhealthy place. 
Perry was surprised to hear you had fixed upon South End.
from Emma by Jane Austen~ 1815
as dusk ebbed into night I could just make out, to my left,
the tiny white specks of boarded fishermen's cottages
that speckled the dark slopes of Leigh, from the jagged toothed 
tower of St Clements church at the crest of the hill down to
the cockle sheds on the waterfront. Scores of miniature boats
nestled in the cradle of the bay.
 The Drowning Pool by Syd Moore ~ 2011
excerpts of Jew Boy by Simon Blumenfeld
engagingly read by Alan Dein
they were all stalking seaward 
as if to intercept the escape of the multitudinous vessels
 that were crowded between Foulness and the Naze
The War of the Worlds, read by Julian Hopper

it is good to sit
be read to
to listen
be familiar with yet
learn something new 
about the place I've lived
nearly all my life!

the reading list ~
Emma ~ Jane Austen
The War of the Worlds ~ H G Wells
The True Heart ~ Sylvia Townsend Warner
Jew Boy ~ Simon Blumenfeld
The Snow Goose: A Story of Dunkirk ~ Paul Gallico
Mr Gurney & Mr Slade ~ Warwick Deeping
Birdsong ~ Sebastian Faulks
The English Years ~ Norbert Gstein
The Drowning Pool ~ Syd Moore