A Stone’s Throw…

…or ‘a really laborious and time-consuming way to make a poem’.

Whilst visiting my parents in April 2025 I went for a walk on the beach. I was lucky to spend my teenage years growing up in a house across the road from the beach - you step out of my parent’s front door, cross the road, walk down a small grass bank and you’re on the pebble beach of Herne Bay in North Kent.

The thing that strikes me about my visits these days is how important it is for me to step on to the beach when I go - a total contradiction to the amount of time I actually spent on the beach when I lived across from it every day (very little).

By leaving that place, and spending years living inland, I’ve come to realise how fundamental and formative the experience of growing up by the sea and in a (at the time, slightly-dilapidated) seaside town has been on my person and my creative output. And this project comes from that place.

On that visit, I collected a small box full of stones from the beach directly opposite my parents house. I’m now in the process of distributing those stones wherever I go, and logging where I place them using the ‘what3words’ map-app.

On one level, leaving a marker of my journey through the world, on another level leaving a piece of me where ever I go.

The other thing this process is doing is creating an ever-growing three-word-per-line poem based on this activity - something I’m both completely in control of (where I place the stones) and also have no influence over whatsoever (the words the map uses to locate that spot just are what they are).

I’m sure something else will emerge through this process as it goes on.

This page documents the stones, the locations, and the poem as it grows.