A Writer's Process: Polly Bull

Polly was a runner- up in the Wild Words Summer Solstice Competition 2019. Here she describes her creative process. Below that, her winning submission…

I wrote this piece to express sadness and disenchantment, as a reflection on family holidays that are so exciting and enjoyable as a child, but less so as an adult whose father has passed away at the age of 59. North Devon as a holiday destination has been in my family tradition since approximately 1919, when my great, great Granny took her children to Woolacombe and Mortehoe following the death of her husband due to the flu epidemic following the First World War.

I have been going to Woolacombe and Mortehoe with my family almost every year for my entire life. It is a stunning location: ragged rockfaces, sheep grazing on the precipices of Morte Point, tide pools and beach after beach (some sandy, so rocky). The big beach, a stunning miles long golden destination, was so exciting. We’d zoom down the sand dunes on body boards, or jump from tufts. Then there would be Grunta beach (jumping from rocks into the sea), Rockham, Barricane, Combesgate and more. Each day we would go on one of the many walks, end up on a beach with pasties and swimming and then walk back to our cosy caravan for dinner, possibly stopping off at a pub on the way.

I chose to focus on this location because it holds a lot of weight in my heart. After my father died in 2015, we all struggled with the loss immensely. I became disillusioned about so many things, including the family holidays. I was pessimistic and depressed and couldn’t face heading to North Devon ever again.

The smugglers came into it because I’ve always been fascinated by them: the danger and the adventure. And they seemed slightly menacing. There is actually a ‘smugglers path’ that leads from Lee Bay to a very secluded beach (the Smugglers Beach, of course). If the tide is out, it is a fun, though somewhat slippery, walk, navigating tide pools and spiky rocks.

I wanted to combine the threatening romance of the smugglers (following the moonlight, breaking the law, living this wild life that was so different to my reserved, studious life growing up), with an acute sense of loss: loss of a parent and a consequent loss of youth. Just as the smugglers got lost with no moon, I became lost with no father.

**

Lost smugglers

We are high tide at dusk,

And the menacing is becoming real.

In the vanished sunshine, waves beat down the walls of the crumbling mill at Lee Bay.

The moon is lost in the gravy sky.

Our minds are lost as we stumble over tide pools, trying to get away.

Upon the cliffs we can’t see the stinging nettles that punish our legs.

We feel nothing of the past, or the scent of the wet earth slippery beneath our uneven stride.

We feel nothing of the old bruises, invisible now, that wound around our throats.

This smugglers’ path is pointless.

It will be forgotten like everything else.

We thought the moon would guide us,

But it is just a fickle rock.