English Beach Poets Society News

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They are closing the piers...

They are closing the piers
pulling up stumps
clocking off
giving up

They are shutting down the pubs
calling permanent time
kicking us out
giving up

They are turning off the waves
switching off the sun
melting the stars
giving up

Driftwood sketches (hand on heart)

Day dream

night scene

sun blinds

moonshine

dawn tide

faded light

sand in shoes

it’s old news

Coffee break

body shakes

cut grass

needn’t ask

black jam

long man

driftwood

it’s all good

From Beachy Head

to sofa bed

Long Reef

to good grief

the aftershocks

the lock stock

a red hand

sun tanned

Hawley sings

a child swings

Orion’s belt

the sky melts

spread light

like marmite

if it’s Earl Grey

it’s Tuesday

The lakes edge

sleepy head

red wine

not this time

a butterfly

flits by

a dolphin glides

the ocean wide

Painted beach

cold feet

golden mile

warm smile

hot shower

stolen hours

a sea mist

the last kiss

Cornish Cliffs

Those moments, tasted once and never done,
Of long surf breaking in the mid-day sun.
A far-off blow-hole booming like a gun-

The seagulls plane and circle out of sight
Below this thirsty, thrift-encrusted height,
The veined sea-campion buds burst into white

And gorse turns tawny orange, seen beside
Pale drifts of primroses cascading wide
To where the slate falls sheer into the tide.

More than in gardened Surrey, nature spills
A wealth of heather, kidney-vetch and squills
Over these long-defended Cornish hills.

A gun-emplacement of the latest war
Looks older than the hill fort built before
Saxon or Norman headed for the shore.

And in the shadowless, unclouded glare
Deep blue above us fades to whiteness where
A misty sea-line meets the wash of air.

Nut-smell of gorse and honey-smell of ling
Waft out to sea the freshness of the spring
On sunny shallows, green and whispering.

The wideness which the lark-song gives the sky
Shrinks at the clang of sea-birds sailing by
Whose notes are tuned to days when seas are high.

From today's calm, the lane's enclosing green
Leads inland to a usual Cornish scene-
Slate cottages with sycamore between,

Small fields and tellymasts and wires and poles
With, as the everlasting ocean rolls,
Two chapels built for half a hundred souls. 

John Betjeman

She paints the sea red

The moon paints her lips red, opens the door and shines. Her jewels glisten on the curves of the water as her hips dance to rhythm of nature.

Poetry (in ocean)

Viking

North Utsire

South Utsire

Forties

Cromarty

Forth

Tyne

Dogger

Fisher

German Bight

Humber

Thames

Dover

Wight

Portland

Plymouth

Biscay

Trafalgar

FitzRoy

(Finisterre)

Sole

Lundy

Fastnet

Irish Sea

Shannon

Rockall

Malin

Hebrides

Bailey

Fair Isle

Faeroes

Southeast Iceland

Nightpoetry

Dress neck to sole

brogue laced

and swiftstride

alongside the saltsea battered

coastal defences

gulls mimic the ack-ack

attack-attack-attacka

from masts and the past

strobe flows across

the carpet gardens

from the balloon lined

dysfunction rooms

down to the flaked edges of oldtown

crunchleather stones are picked up

and flungtossed sidearm

into the bibberty-bobberty

light bulbs weave waves

along the length breadth

of the repeat repeat to the end

testing for a fault

resting at the fort

old words walk

along old walls

as the ritual of nightpoetry

rears up and up

like the foamsmash

at the pierjump

rushing through

my sand coated

cold iron fingers.

We know

You know

...I can’t make this walk home

without the call of your tide

flooding my heart once more...

And so it began...

With a crumbling cucumber sandy-wich
a thermos of brackish tea
and stern resilience in the face of a biting so'westerly.

Camped behind a mound of shingle
and the storm lashed groyne
there is no better place to write

there is no better place to be!

Welcome to the English Beach Poets Society

If you have ever written or read a poem in the sand, scratched a heart with an arrow on a piece of driftwood, stared out across the English channel and written the greatest lines in history only to forget them before you make it back to your bedsit/flat/hotel room then this blog is for you.