Editions

Strands

Strands

  • A Year of Discoveries on the Beach

Strands describes a year's worth of walking on the ultimate beach: inter-tidal and constantly turning up revelations: mermaid's purses, lugworms, sea potatoes, messages in bottles, buried cars, beached whales and a perfect cup from a Cunard liner.

This is a series of meditations prompted by walking on the wild estuarial beaches of Ainsdale Sands between Blackpool and Liverpool, Strands is about what is lost and buried then discovered, about all the things you find on a beach, dead or alive, about flotsam and jetsam, about mutability and transformation - about sea-change.

Reviews

  • A fine book… Transparent, undeceived prose

    Kate Kellaway, Guardian

  • Compelling … well-contextualised, sharply-observed, clued up, environmentally aware and deeply researched

    Independent

  • With clarity and candour, in the natural voice of a modern storyteller, she tells what she sees at the intersection of herself and whatever is delivered to her by the tide

    The Times

  • Sprackland has a wonderfully curious eye

    Financial Times

  • Simply gorgeous ... One of the finest piece of writing, nature or otherwise, to emerge this year

    Big Issue

More from this Author

About the Author

Jean Sprackland

Jean Sprackland is the author of four previous poetry collections, including Tilt, which won the 2007 Costa Poetry Award. She has also published a book of non-fiction, Strands: A Year of Discoveries on the Beach, which won the 2012 Portico Prize. She lives in London.

Jean Sprackland

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