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| View across Gibraltar Harbour at sunset |
I guess I'm lucky to live in a place where landscape - or seascape, to be more accurate - is spectacular. Gibraltar is small - roughly three miles square rising to 630m above sea level, it juts out to sea, the Bay of Gibraltar to the west, the Strait of Gibraltar and the mountains of North Africa to the south, the Mediterranean Sea stretching out to the east and the Sierras of Spain to the North. We are regularly treated to the most intense, colourful sunsets - the majesty of which inspired the broad brush strokes in which I described them at the start of my poem To the Harbour:
"We used to walk to the harbour,
You and I,
On summer evenings,
And watch the sky drown in flames
Into a sea ablaze with the fires of sunset.
And we would gaze in childish wonder
At the purple silhouettes
Of the Spanish hills, their grandeur
Distant forms of closer shadows."
(from my poem, To the Harbour)
Broad brushstrokes are as helpful to the writer as to the artist: they instantly create an image, an impression, set a mood, form the backdrop to the next piece of action in a story. Visualise the quivering heat of Van Gogh's Starry Night and the way that those thick globs of perfectly placed paints stir something in the soul that instantly conveys the heat of the night and the intensity of an emotion we can barely put into words but can feel simply by looking on the picture, and you will understand what I am trying to get at. When the landscape is vast and you need to somehow bring it to life for the reader in words, broad brushstrokes are as useful to the writer as to the reader:
"A surging swell, a screaming horde, this sea
Charges to the shore and thrashes at the
Stone of ancient cliff that groans against the
Pounding beat of winter drums and bugles."
(from my poem, Samhain Storm)
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| From the new marina up to ancient Rock |
But I think that if you look with a writer's eyes (the inner eyes as well as those on your face), there is much to be written about pretty much anywhere. And this is where funnelling down from those scene setting brushstrokes into those intimate details that bring a place truly to life works so well. Detail are what bring a place alive to the reader, make a setting real. I was not around when the remains of the victorious British fleet limped back to Gibraltar after the Battle of Trafalgar, the body of the dead Lord Nelson no board, but it was the detail that I imagined that helped me add realism to the poem:
"Rounded bellies slowly heaving,
As the waves through Straits come creeping,
Gentlemen with top-hats nodding,
Gather round to mutter warnings
That English blood will flow,
While in and out, skipping, darting,
Schoolboys after treats go scrambling,
Small boats full of fish come hailing
Brine-burnt girls that watch them, wishing
The winds of change would blow."
(from my poem, Home from Trafalgar)
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| HMS Victory |
I described a scene from imagination: portly gentlemen in top hats muttering about the war (Gibraltar's older generation like to gather at a place affectionately known here as El Martillo - long story on how that name came about - and better known as John Mackintosh Square, and spend mornings gossiping about current affairs); and the fishing boats putting in to harbour, their crew calling out at the local girls who are desperate for social change to bring about improvement to their lot. I think it added a realism to the poem that otherwise would just have spoken about the end of the Battle of Trafalgar, a well-worn theme, and which I had based on Gibraltar as a place, the port to which the fleet sailed after the battle.
So what about somewhere that doesn't have the reputation for glorious summer days and a vast, stretching landscape around it? Can we still bring it to life as poets? Of course we can: broad brushstrokes to set the scene and detail to highlight the uniqueness of that place. Take the River Medway at Gillingham for example. You're not going to readily find it in travel brochures but yet it is a place of immense beauty. Have you ever watched the sun rise across the Medway from the bottom of Copperhouse Lane, from Sharp's Green or from Horrid Hill?Or the sunset in the same place? I have, and it is breathtakingly beautiful.
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| From Riverside County Park, Gillingham looking towards Kingsnorth, winter, late afternoon |
Even the silhouettes of the industrial buildings at Kingsnorth across the river stand majestic. Have you seen the way that small boats squat in the mud behind the outdoor pool at The Strand, waiting for the tide to wake them and slap them into action again? It's charming - look out to the wide open horizon of the estuary where the colours reflect the ever-changing light, then bring your eyes to focus on the detail of the little boats, or do the reverse:
"They bob, a row of coloured corks,
Dipping first their prows
Then raising them again
To sniff at morning air,
Restless now the tide creeps in,
Tugging at their tethers
Like frothing colts
Eager to race out to sea,
To join the shoals,
To ride the streaming currents
That pluck at them now,
Hither, thither and thereabout."
(from my poem, Boats at Bay)
And what if you are trying to write about an old town, maybe run down with slum areas? Old English seaside towns, for example, lost some of their holiday charms in recent decades. Can we use broad brushstrokes and fine detail to bring it to life? I tried this out the other way around, starting with the detail, this time writing about an imaginary seaside town but inspired by trips to Herne Bay, Hythe and Dymchurch in Kent:
She sits on a fabric chair
at the door to a timber hut,
perched on a shingle shoreline.
Her fingers work swiftly
occasionally tripping over
their own swollen knuckles,
working at wool,
needles dipping in and out
in relentless rhythm,
like the feeding beaks of oystercatchers
out on the sands at low tide.
She feels the spray on her face
each time the sea returns,
its winter waves thrashing
just yards from her toes
and scented with snow and far-off ice.
In summer, its froth
Plays in the rock pools
Spreading the smell of sunshine.
(from my poem, By the Beach Hut)
Perhaps I am lucky to be in Gibraltar at the moment and have my eyes filled with visual treats daily, but a writer could and should be able to write about any place, real or imaginary, far or near, about a place present or how it was in the past. Setting the scene with broad brushstrokes and drilling down to small detail helps me. Try it.
