Letters
Letters from Bicheno
Some writing resists being gathered all at once.
It prefers to move more slowly.
At varying times each year, a literary letter leaves Bicheno, carried not by urgency but by weather, tide, and the long patience of this place.
These letters are written from the coast and the town that holds it:
from granite and wind, from light on water, from the way absence settles into small communities and becomes part of their language.
They are shaped by Bicheno’s memory, by those who have lived here, who have waited, who have left, and who have returned altered.
The letters are sent via email.
They are written as correspondence, between lovers, between years, between people and the place that keeps them.
Each year, the reason for separation changes.
Bicheno does not.
This year’s letters
This year’s letters are written from Bicheno, exchanged between two lovers separated by war.
The town sits quietly behind each letter.
The bay keeps its shape.
The sea goes on breathing, indifferent and enduring, as people are pulled away from one another.
These letters do not tell a story straight.
They arrive incomplete, interrupted, carrying what can be said and much that cannot.
You do not need to have read earlier letters to read the next one.
That, too, is how letters work.
Receiving the letters
If you choose to receive the letters, they will arrive when they are written.
There is no schedule.
There is no archive.
Some letters may already have passed you by.
Others have not yet been imagined.
They are written from Bicheno, and they come when the place allows them.
The letters are free.