LOOE, CORNWALL: A NEW POEM, PLUS JULIE ADLARD'S 'PORT LOOE' ARTWORK...

Looe, Cornwall…

The catch was silently unloaded

Onto a straight, functional quay

By a line of sea-going vessels,

Amidst a tangle of ropes and lines and nets;

But the pervading stench goaded

Along Looe’s riverbanks and then back towards the sea.

The town was clumsily upgraded

Into a vacation resort of sorts

By such necessary renovations

Behind a brace of beaches and sand and amenities;

But the invading seaweed impeded

Along Looe’s shoreline and lay offensive like warts…

The scene is simply portrayed

From the tide’s perspective

By the pair of sandy aprons,

Abutting white buildings and a promenade and its banjo pier;

But an unbridled beauty is displayed

Across Looe’s sea-front, simplistic, yet attractive… 

Pete Ray

May 19th 2017

Visited Looe in a cold, dismal 1984 February and stayed in a flat alongside the quay which belonged to my dad’s mate, Eddie Coleman.

The fish smell was er, strong, but what shocked me were the huge stacks of seaweed on the sandy beaches, not to be cleared away apparently until just before Easter arrived.

Julie Adlard’s cleansed sea-front artwork is how I must try to think of Looe, a place I visited several times as a boy, not really to sea-bathe at all but as somewhere for my uncle to park his car and for the family to embark on the cliff-walk to Polperro during the early 1960s…

JULIE ADLARD'S 'PORT LOOE'...