Only half an hour’s drive away is Katwijk aan Zee, a traditional town with a small fishing port. During the summer vacation, the weekly Tuesday market is extended: crafts people showing and selling their goods, music, or a display of vintage cars.
The council spent money on a large car park hidden below the dunes. Coffee, a walk round the market, lunch on the beach. This year my friend and I chose the Trio of the Sea – smoked salmon, Dutch shrimps and a delicious taco with tuna and wasabi. We favour Het Strand, with glass panels between tables for privacy.
Today, the heat is back. So, I’m posting a cooling prompt from earlier this year. Write on from Everything was frozen…
Everything is frozen
The welcomes clatter to the ground. Those sandwiches, salmon and cucumber; the cheese scones; even the tiered metal tray on the once-wooden table. Mary, the absentee landlady, gasps. Two small vowels fall on the carpet. Everything so white, so silvery, so creaking on the change.
Tom strokes his beard, that has been soft as a lamb, cuts his finger and now the miracle of the red blood turning to icy droplets. If there had been a cat, it would have chased them around the room. This is always a sadness – a poem or story without a cat.
Panorama Mesdag, Scheveningen village with The Hague in background. Credit: T Duijndam.
Recently two friends were over from the UK – a Seville reunion. They stayed at Scheveningen, minutes from the beach and boulevard. It was mostly sunny. I pointed out some sights: the red lighthouse, the building with the green shutters, and Seinpostduin – the high dune on which the painter Hendrik Mesdag sat in 1880 to make the preliminary sketches for the commission he’d received for a 360-degree painting.
At one time there were many panoramas. They were expensive to maintain and once photography and film were available, people’s interest declined and most were demolished.
Panorama Mesdag, The Hague (1881) is the world’s oldest surviving panorama in its original location. The painting is over 14m high, has a diameter of 40m and the circumference is 120m2. That makes it the largest painting in the Netherlands.
Scheveningen was then an independent fishing village with its own clothing and dialect. There were about 500 houses and people lived from herring fishing.
When he got the commission, Mesdag was already well-known for his seascapes. Several of these are shown at the Panorama. He wanted the sky to look as though it was the weather on one single day. He made many sketches, also of the houses which were transferred to canvas using a grid. The original glass cylinder in which he sat is shown at Panorama Mesdag.
The Panorama commission was a massive job and Mesdag was fortunate to be able to put a team together: his wife Sientje Mesdag-van Houten who was an established painter in her own right, Théophile de Bock who painted the sky and dunes with broad brush strokes, Bernard Blommers, and George Hendrik Breitner who specialised in painting horses. Mesdag himself focused on the sea and the flat-bottomed boats on the beach.
It took them four months to complete the work. Instead of a signature, Mesdag painted Sientje. She sits on the beach painting under a white parasol. Panorama Mesdag opened on 1 August 1881.
It’s an astonishing experience – come up the wooden staircase and suddenly you stand on the viewing platform: scenery all around you. There is so much rich detail: dozens of boats, horses pulling in the boats, cavalry horses, the sky, the women out with their washing, bathers, the steam train on its way from The Hague, birds.
Because of the glass roof, the weather changes as you are there, and the illusion is complete because the platform is surrounded by real sand with objects on it. You are standing on Seinpostduin, more than 140 years ago.
My thanks to David Cooke, Editor of The High Window, where this poem first appeared.
Panorama Mesdag
Invisible skylights let through the light. Just as I arrive upstairs, the sun comes out across the busy beach I know so well.
All those horses. In two neat columns, the cavalry on exercise, heading south. Other horses pull the flat-bottomed boats onto the sand. Fish is being sold straight from the boats. Women are repairing nets.
Mesdag’s wife has been included. I know where to look for Sientje, painting in a folding chair, striped sunshade.
Am I hallucinating the sound of gulls? I see the seams in the canvas, and I don’t care. As I go round the wooden platform, here is the washing laid out on the grass, a plume of smoke, the empty clog.
It’s my pleasure to introduce our May guest poet Jane McKie. We met many years ago on a writing workshop and are still part of an email group. You can find her biography at the end of this post. Cinnamon Press recently published her new poems and I’ve chosen some poems from Mine: vivid, clear embodied images with marvellous economy.
Mine
On nights when the wind drops, I hear it crooning softly, not like a real bomb. A toothless, barnacled silhouette, wittering to itself when the tide is low. My friends and I sometimes get close, daring each other to nudge its rust. But what happens when the music cuts out? Tonight, the mine’s a mute companion: whiff of brine, cryptic fist. As my eyelids close, that’s when it—
Kevlar
I am the tattoo of a spider’s web on a sixteen-year-old girl’s calf. Traced from a drawing of a photo, in time, I will thread up her thigh, over her whole torso, in a riot of silk that is stronger than Kevlar.
She will wear me like armour: my vest of ink, her toughest skin. Who wouldn’t fear a woman fluent in the language of spiders? Those twitches in cobwebs that throb like old wounds.
Dreaming in an age of austerity
Not a single one finished: all mark time until a rich developer completes the job. Here, stone knuckles. There, exposed metal rods stab at the sky like a mech-monster’s fingers.
Not vital or hungry, these resort Titans. But not quite dead either. Gulls like to roost in the pockets of them. Gulls dabble bills in puddles that form from the absence of roofs.
Even small children play in the undead bodies of imagined buildings, sneaking past tape to be mummies and daddies in beautiful houses that shelter insatiable, suckling doll-babies.
Polished malachite
on my desk, riven with almost-blue, a pool or algal cistern.
I touch it when I’m sad and its green eye blinks, rippling with souterrain light.
Biography
Jane McKie is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh. She has written several poetry collections, including Morocco Rococo (2007), Kitsune (2015), and Quiet Woman, Stay (2020) with Cinnamon. Her most recent full collection is Carnation Lily Lily Rose (Blue Diode, 2023). She lives in Scotland, but was originally from the Sussex coast, which inspired several poems in Mine.
When I saw a post by ‘Albert’ on Twitter with this quote by L S Lowry: Had I not been lonely I would not have seen what I did, it reminded me of this poem by Matthew Sweeney. A fine ekphrastic poem that moves beyond description, as it enters into dialogue with the artist about their work.
I have a few ekphrastic poems that need expanding in some way, so I’m going to do some research and explore how I could incorporate the artist’s own words into those poem. Is this something you might do with your own writing? If you’re a painter, photographer, sculptor, do poems inspire you?
Here are the two parts of Matthew Sweeney’s poem Dialogue with an Artist
Matthew died in 2018, his poems are still with us.
Dialogue with an Artist
THE LONELY Incorporating the words of L.S. Lowry
I used to paint the sea, but never a shore, and nobody was sailing on it. It wasn’t even the sea, it was just my own loneliness.
It’s all there, you know. It’s all in the sea. The battle is there, the inevitability of it all, the purpose. When I switched to people
they were all lonely. Crowds are the loneliest thing of all, I say. Every individual in them is a stranger to everyone else.
I would stand for hours in one spot and scores of little kids who hadn’t had a wash for weeks would group round me.
Had I not been lonely, none of my work would have happened. I should not have done what I’ve done, or seen what I’ve seen.
There’s something grotesque in me and I can’t help it. I’m drawn to others who are like that. They’re very real people. It’s just
I’m attracted to sadness and there are some very sad things. These people are ghostly figures. They’re my mood, they’re myself.
Lately, I started a big self-portrait. I thought I won’t want this thing, no one will, so I went and turned it into a grotesque head.
MEMO TO LOWRY
You’re right, there are grotesques who shine a dark light that lures us like how the sirens tried to lure Odysseus, and yes, maybe we ourselves are among the grotesques, but there are also the beautiful who, if we’re lucky, save us from ourselves, and validate the sun’s light, and maybe also the moon’s.
On Monday, my journey to the other side of the North Sea involved five different modes of transport: taxi from Aldeburgh to Ipswich, National Express coach to Standsted Airport, Easyjet flight to Schiphol, Intercity to Den Haag Centraal, tram to the flat. All clockwork, no delays. It was dark when I got back home.
Taking part in the ‘live’ Poetry in Aldeburgh Festival has been a joyous experience. The highlight was the reading Our Whole Selves with poet friends. Poet Kathy Pimlott and I wrote several blog pieces about the readings, workshops, performances, open mic. These will soon be on the official website. A big thank you to the small organising team which managed to arrange a wonderful programme.
The poems I read were from my new collection Remembering / Disease, published by Broken Sleep Books last month. I opened my set with Nautical Miles (from my collection Nothing serious, nothing dangerous). When I looked at an old photo, I saw that only Hoek van Holland is ‘less than a hundred’ nautical miles. Good reminder that poetic truth matters more than the accurate facts…
Nautical miles
Outside the Sailors’ Reading Room, the sign:
thin wooden planks, painted white: Den Helder, IJmuiden, Hoek van Holland.
Across the horizon, they are less than a hundred nautical miles from Southwold in Suffolk
where the narrow beach of pebbles – grey, brown, black mostly –
is held together by couplets of groynes, slimy green.
Both our languages have the word strand.
Note: The Sailors’ Reading Room, Southwold is a Grade II listed building from 1864 and still a refuge for sailors and fishermen.
Yesterday’s journey: comfortable Eurostar from Rotterdam Centraal, a sit-down at Soho & Co, Liverpool Street Station for food. The unexpected ‘red signal’ at Colchester turned out to be ‘waiting for British Transport Police’. They escorted a couple off the train. Missed connection at Ipswich gives an unexpected hour to mull and ponder. The friendly taxi driver from A2B and warm welcome at The White Lion where the bar is still open.
Over half a century ago I shared a room in an Earls Court hostel with three other Dutch women. P&O Lines Ltd had just taken us on as WAPs (Woman Assistant Pursers) and we were to be employed in various offices while waiting for a ship to become available. I did secretarial work for a Scottish marine engineer, struggling to capture the technical terms – about bulkheads of a vessel that was being built at the famous Cammell Laird yard in Birkenhead.
We have kept in touch all those years, and celebrated in the Eye, Amsterdam with lunch in 2019. The film museum is an iconic building just the other side of the railway station. A short ferry journey is a good way to get there. Our plan for an annual reunion had not taken a pandemic into account and now one of us has health issues. Fingers crossed for September!
Our language skills had got us the job: Dutch, English, French and German. The photo is from S.S. ORCADES where I was Supernumerary, translating the news, and holding daily meetings. Here I am with the small group from Germany and Switzerland.
Assisted passage
You’re on F deck aft, an alleyway away from your spouse, also sharing with five strangers.
Time to fold over your memories, freshly laundered. You don’t need memories where you’re heading.
You saw the Fire Dance in Dakar. Days of sea, sun, and sky. Cape Town with Table Mountain.
Nine grey days of swell. Freemantle, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney.
Shake a leg, show a leg. You’ll soon be down under. Your new upside-down lives.
On Wednesday this week King Willem-Alexander opened the Zeesluis Ijmuiden. These new sea locks, built alongside the existing locks, are the largest in the world: 500 metres long, 70 metres wide and 18 metres deep. The existing locks were nearing the end of their life and becoming too small for the huge vessels heading for Amsterdam.
A major design fault was discovered. This resulted in excess cost of almost three million Euro and the grand opening almost three years overdue. Now ships can pass independently from the tides. But, with the cruise ships entering the locks, so does a lot more salt water… and are those towering liners still wanted?
A splendid view of it all can be had a little further out. The last time I had lunch there was, probably, in 2011 – that Icelandic volcano had closed air space. I managed to get a shared cabin on the ferry to Newcastle and treated my friend to lunch as a thank-you.
De Kop van de Haven, Ijmuiden for Trieneke
It’s not a pub, it’s not in the UK. It’s right by the tall chimneys of the steel works, once Royal Dutch, now Tata. The canal to Amsterdam was dug by unemployed men and now there’s a gleaming ferry terminal: Christmas shopping in Newcastle.
Fish is fish is fresh is fresh with a view of water and waves and smoke and boats and barges and ships and liners and the wind. Outside on the head of the harbour the bronze fisherman holding a storm lantern in his right hand.
Earlier this week I celebrated my birthday. Up to 10 visitors are now allowed onto the camp site for parties and birthdays. However, I decided to celebrate over a 10-day period: some days the weather has been autumnal – cold, wet and windy. Inside the caravan I wouldn’t have been able to guarantee the 1m social distance. Besides, after months of social isolation, lockdown, shielding, I was desperate for proper contact and conversation with family and close friends. It was a marvellous extended week!
I vividly remember another birthday. With a close friend I had an overnight stay on Vlieland, one of the Frisian Islands in the Wadden Sea. We travelled by ferry from Harlingen (a peaceful 90-minute journey), stayed overnight in Hotel De Wadden that once was the island’s marine college, rented bikes, ate fish and chips, bought cranberries which grow there. We were blessed with the weather: sunny and a breeze.
A major storm in 1296 separated Vlieland from the mainland. It’s hard to imagine how important the island once was: in the 17th century hundreds of trading and whaling ships would have been afloat nearby. The tides and winds have shifted and changed the shape of the island. Now, it is only about 12 kms long and 2 kms wide at best and, mostly dependent on tourism. Visitors are not allowed to bring a car across – bring your own bike or rent one!
Vlieland
Empty days
cycling on white paths
crushed shells
bless the lighthouse
on this island
Full nights
dreams of fishes
frogs, berries, seals
the white ferry
resting
Birthday
blessed July
sky, salt breeze
You look younger
on this island
Panorama Mesdag is a cylindrical painting, more than 14 metres high and 120 metres in circumference. It’s a view of the sea, the dunes and Scheveningen village as it was in 1881. It’s the oldest 19th century panorama in the world in its original site.
Ever since getting my caravan in Holland, I’ve been visiting several times a year. When I am standing on the circular viewing platform in the centre, I know I’m just 14 metres away from the canvas. I know it’s all an illusion, but I can hear sea gulls, I get the salty tang, I see clouds pass by and the sun break through.
Painting the enormous canvas was a team effort: Hendrik Willem Mesdag with his wife Sientje and various able painters from the Hague. Other panoramas portray violent scenes (the battle at Waterloo, the Crucifixion of Christ). Here it’s visible silence, still asthe hourglass (Dante Gabriel Rossetti), the tranquility of everyday life. A few fishermen are messing about with their nets, the boats are beached, the cavalry are walking their horses on the sand, women are chatting in a doorway, a dog lies down quietly.
Before the camping closes and I lock up my caravan, I will go and stand on that viewing platform again and say my goodbyes to Panorama Mesdag. The poem is by my friend Keith Lander.
The Mesdag Panorama
—after a panoramic painting by Mesdag in The Hague
I’m on a school trip to The Hague
transfixed by the Mesdag Panorama,
especially the seascape stretching away
from the viewpoint on the man-made sandhill,
with fishing boats moored on the vast beach,
a troop of cavalry men in training,
and, joy of joys, a donkey ride.
When no one is looking I climb
over the railings onto the sandhill
and, without looking back, skip away
laughing and tumbling down the slope
towards the beach, the north sea breeze
in my hair, to run behind the military
and have endless rides on the donkeys.
Forty years later, a bored business man
with time to spare before an appointment,
I visit the Panorama and remember
I’ve been there before as a schoolboy.
As I stare at the seascape again I see
the boats on the beach, the military men
and a lost boy waving from the donkey ride.
Acacia Publications 