Just back from a weekend on the Kent coast, staying in my in-laws’ lovely flat in Ramsgate. We love our trips to Thanet (I recommend the shell-grotto in Margate, boules at the Brown Jug, seafood at Eddie Gilberts and a strong beer in the sun at The Belgian Bar).
This time we started in Whitstable, with a pint by the sea in the Old Neptune and then crab sandwiches and plates of native oysters to takeaway from Wheelers, a Tipping the Velvet-ish 19th century institution, which we ate on the groynes on the pebble beach.
Then this morning we woke up early to head for Pegwell bay and see Richborough Power Station demolished at 9am. There were hundreds of people gathered on the white cliffs to watch it crumble across the mud-flats: eerie quiet and then the thunderous rumble.
This week I also got my copies of both The Dark Horse and Caasha’s pamphlet, and the podcast Caasha and I recorded has gone up. There were launch readings with Caasha at Trinity College, Cambridge and in London (we’re at the Mosaic Rooms on tuesday and in Cardiff on Friday if you’d like to see us in perform).
And I was really pleased to be a runner up in the Modern Poetry in Translation competition for my translation of Agnieszka Wolny-Hamkało’s FM Biography– it’s up on their website with my translator’s notes. Check out the winner too – Ingar Palmlund’s brilliant version of Tranströmer’s Allegro.
clarepollard 