Hand-written notes and journals have a magic to them. Durrell is a favourite poet and his house in Greece was as close to the coast as you can be without getting your feet wet.  Were these spatterings the voice of the sea telling him when he had a fine turn of phrase, or one that needed more work?

‘The battered and sea-stained notebooks in which I rough out my poems…’

For other writers on notebooks, see Thoreau, David Esterly, and Patrick Leigh Fermor on the loss of one.

Source: Lawrence Durrell, Prospero’s Cell (Faber & Faber 1970 (1945)), p. 16-17

Photo credit: Kira auf der Heide at unsplash.com