Talking Location With author JS Monroe – West Penwith, CORNWALL
‘On Cefalù Beach’ by Tom Benjamin – third prize winner in the 2021 TripFiction ‘Voyages by Verse’ Poetry Competition
25th July 2021
‘On Cefalù Beach’ by Tom Benjamin – third prize winner in the 2021 TripFiction ‘Voyages by Verse’ Writing Competition
Tom Benjamin is the author of the critically-acclaimed Bologna-set Daniel Leicester crime series, published by Constable in the UK. The series debuted with A Quiet Death In Italy in 2020 with its sequel, The Hunting Season, published this May. Requiem in La Rossa is due out next year. Tom now lives in Northern Italy.
He grew up, though, in the suburbs of north London and began his working life as a journalist before becoming a spokesman for Scotland Yard. He later moved into public health, where he developed Britain’s first national campaign against alcohol abuse, Know Your Limits, and led the drugs awareness programme FRANK.
On Cefalù Beach
On Cefalù beach,
Sandwiched between
Italian pop
And the sea,
It is the month of Caesar Augustus
In the era of the selfie.
Locals hawk
Coconut slices.
Gipsy girls offer
Stone-fingered massages.
A trireme is balanced
Beside a cruise liner.
While backpackers surf,
Byzantines lash Turks
With tongues of Greek Fire.
Caravaggio stumbles past
Sun dazed, the rusty tip
Of his scabbard
Stuttering in the sand.
An old fisherman, the strap
Of his icebox yawing across
His sinewy shoulder,
Calls in Sicilian, Greek,
Arabic, Phoenician:
Salty miracles,
Pistachio ice cream.
Cold Coca Cola,
Sighted land.
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Click on the titles below to read the other two prizewinning poems
Tripoli Dreaming by Rebecca Stonehill
In Search of Baghdad by Karen Quevillon
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