Summertime, seaside and sonnets

Low tide on the Medway Estuary

Some writers use the summer as a period of "downtime".  It makes sense - the days are long and drowsy, filled with the warmth of sunshine, the scent of wildflowers and the sleepy hum of bumble bees. The break from routine refreshes us and our creative muscle becomes toned and honed so that we can return to that writing project that will then fill our autumn evening.

So the idyll goes.  Many others of us are still stuck in the treadmill that takes us in long grey lines of commuters to the conveyor belt of activity that is the office or warehouse or wherever it is we spend our days and we are still trying to scribble out that masterpiece late into the night wondering if anyone is ever going to bother reading those words that seem so difficult to draw out of our exhausted minds.

Taking a walk by the Thames can be surprisingly inspirational

Yet even for those stuck at work, the general slowdown that comes each summer can be a bit of a breather, a chance to relax, refresh and restore the spark to their writing. 

Some city dwellers are lucky enough to find local parks with a lake, such as Capstone Park in Chatham

Summertime is thought of as synonymous with the sea.  A good walk along the shore can do wonders to dissolve those cobwebs, clear the fog of overwork (surely I am not the only one who suffers from acute brain fog after one of those interminable meetings where nothing is actually decided?), and inspire.  The sound of the waves, their movement, the way the light plays on them, what they mean to the poet, for example, can all be expressed in words, words that have a gift of arising as the mind relaxes and the writer observes the sea. Take these, from Pablo Neruda in his poem "The Wide Ocean".

The falling wave,

arch of identity, shattering feathers,

is only spume when it clears, 

and returns to its source, unconsumed.

I rather think that a description like this comes from the poet's close observation of wave after wave after wave crashing along the sea shore.

I love being by the sea.  Just an hour after work is enough to energise me.  And I love taking a stroll along the ragged edge of a river, or the wide marshes on the fringe of the estuary.  Some people do similar.  Or they fish, collect pebbles, shells, dig around the mud for cockles and mussels, take photographs with their complex cameras and long lenses.  On my walks along the canal bank, I see students sketching, retired artists daubing watercolours on canvas.  Bodies of water appeal to thinkers as well as doers.  Writers collect words.  Then they go away and mould them into poems, or sentences that pick up the thread of their novel, or add meaning to a story-line. 

So whether you are on holiday at the seaside, or stuck at work, it's worth making the most of those lingering hours of daylight to go down to the river, or lake, or sea, or pond.  Let your mind wander and let the words flow like the incoming tide.  As the sonnet by John Keats goes:

It keeps eternal whisperings around 
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell
Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
Often 'tis in such gentle temper found
That scarcely will the very smallest shell
Be mov'd for days from whence it sometime fell,
When last the winds of heaven were unbound.
Oh ye! who have your eye-balls vex'd and tir'd,
Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea;
Oh ye! whose ears are dinn'd with uproar rude,
Or fed too much with cloying melody,--
Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood
Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quir'd! 

John Keats