Pages Of The Sea; Pages of Books by Sheena Wilkinson

Last month I was whingeing on expressing concern about how much travel I was doing. This month I want to share two lovely writerly experiences which happened within a few miles from my home.

my local area 

First, the local Community Association’s Book Group had chosen Star By Star  as their November book, and I was in the strange position of listening to local people, some of whom I knew, some of whom were strangers, tell me what they thought about my book. Luckily they seemed to like it, and their insights were fascinating. I had set the book locally, but changed names and a few topographical features to suit the story, and some people recognised Cuanbeg as Newcastle, whereas some were convinced it was in another county altogether. 

They were all adults, middle-aged and older, but weren’t put off by the fact that the book was primarily aimed at teenagers. Sometimes I answered questions, but on a couple of occasions I was able to sit back and let them argue a point – which was odd but delightful, like eavesdropping on gossip about your nearest and dearest  

As a writer working from home, and a single person in a very traditional, family-oriented rural community – to which I moved only 16 years ago, it’s easy to feel isolated from neighbours. This lovely meeting reminded me that there was no need for that. I have now joined the Book Group. 

This was a small-scale event. The second experience was nationwide, and yet also intensely local and intimate. Like many of this Blog’s readers I spent several hours of Sunday 11^thNovember on the beach at Danny Boyle’s Pages Of The Sea artwork, commissioned as part of the 14-18 Now commemorations. Sand portraits of participants in WW1 – mainly soldiers of course but also nurses, chaplains and others – were etched on the sand, and taken away by the tide.

Murlough beach just before the tide came in 

 My local beach is Murlough, County Down, under the shadow of the Mourne mountains. Star By Star and my earlier WW1 novel Name Upon Name are set wholly or partly in the area, and both of them explore the lives of local soldiers. When I was asked by the Nerve Centre, who co-ordinated the event at Murlough, to lead the crowd in reading Carol Ann Duffy’s searing poem ‘A Wound In Time’ I was immensely honoured. Out of all the opportunities my books have given me, this has to be the most moving.

I arrived at the beach in pouring rain at 8 a.m. The sand portrait of our chosen local solider, Rifleman John McCance, was already in place, and volunteers, including children, were raking the sand to form lines of silhouettes of more people. John McCance was born in Dundrum, less than a mile from the beach we stood on, and enlisted in nearby Downpatrick, where my own soldier grandfather was stationed twenty years later, before he too left these shores to fight in the Second World War. McCance died at Passchendaele and like so many others has no known grave. He is commemorated on the Tyne Cot memorial, along with 35,000 others. I visited Tyne Cot in 2004 and was overwhelmed by the scale of it. 

My own, much less impressive picture of the portrait

Pages of the Sea was also on a huge scale, with events taking place all round the coastline of these islands, and yet it was very personal and local too. Relatives of John McCance attended.  For me, it was a ten-minute drive on country roads, but many people had made long early-morning journeys. A choir sang local traditional songs, and then I led the reading of the poem. I hadn’t expected people to join in but everyone did. By then the rain had stopped and the morning was calm. Against the swish and roll of the incoming tide we read Duffy’s powerful words. And when we dispersed, to go about out normal Sundays, John McCance’s portrait had gone, taken by the sea much more gently than lives were taken at Passchendaele.