Hello friends. Today, I’m flying to Germany for the Frankfurt Book Fair - an enormous annual conference full of publishing people. One of our goals there is to build connections that will help us find and publish brilliant new writing in translation - for the new magazine. And so, it seemed like an apt month to share this essay with you: a piece written for, and subsequently shortlisted by, the Alpine Fellowship 2024. I hope you like it.
It’s the nicest day we’ve had all week. My shoes kick dew from cobwebbed grass, their canvas soaking up the settled dawn. The sun is already high and pale in the sky.
I follow the usual path along the edge of the trees, breaking out of the shade as meadow turns to pale grey pebbles. Clattering up onto the bank, I pause, then turn left. This way, slowly, I move east along the scoop of coast which introduces this side of Barry to the sea.
Once away from the park and the dog walkers, I plonk myself down on a larger, flatter stone and look out over the channel. The water here is brown with churning tides and sediment, but when the light is bright you can pretend: that hidden beneath the blinding gleam are waters bluer than Pembrokeshire – just a few hours further down the coast, and out of the Severn Estuary.
The tide would have been low in the small hours, and has made most of its way back in already. The rise and collapse of the waves are just a few meters from my feet. I lean back, finding a stable pebble for each palm, and close my eyes. The sunlight flickers red through my warm lids. I listen.
I love language. As a writer, I revel in it. Out on walks I can’t help but look for the ideal words to capture what I see, smell and hear. Best of all, what I feel. Much of the time I’m frustrated by the vocabulary that’s not available to me – the 265,000 words existing in the English language outside of the average user’s repertoire. But today, on this morning, I feel particularly stumped.
I’m trying to describe the sounds of the sea.
I straighten up, take out my notebook and pencil, and test some words. Drag. Hush. Clunk. Slush. It all seems far too obvious. Clichéd language that signifies descriptions of the sea, rather than the sea itself.
I try again, shaping my mouth into the beginnings of sounds, trying to forget my in-built dictionary and translate what I can hear into letters on a page.
Fshhht.
The small collapse of silty water—
Spltooshk.
Onto pebbles.
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