Suffolk Scallop

‘I hear those voices that will not be drowned’, from Benjamin Britten’s opera, Peter Grimes.

Pebbles slip and roll beneath our soles
on the slope down to the ebb and swell.

Suddenly it erupts from the shingle beach,
a sculpture, two halves of a broken shell

like hands extended to a passing gull
or a cloud, one half upright,

the polished surface facing the sea,
catching the scattering light.

The giant steel shell degenerates,
rusted and broken by waves and time,

gently towards a state of collapse.
For a photographic moment, the scallop is mine.

Kim M. Russell, 14th August 2024

Scallop: A Conversation with the Sea 2003 by Maggi Hambling, photographed my me.

My poem for the dVerse Poets Pub Open Link Night/Live.

On my birthday, my husband drove us for an hour and a half down to Aldeburgh, a little seaside town on the Suffolk coast. For some time, I’ve wanted to visit Benjamin Britten’s home and inspiration, and Maggi Hambling’s tribute to him.

Scallop was created by Hambling in 2003. Fabricated from steel , it is made up of the two halves of a broken shell. ‘I hear those voices that will not be drowned’ from Benjamin Britten’s opera, Peter Grimes is cut into the sculpture’s upper edge.

For Maggi Hambling, Scallop is more than just a sculpture; she designed it to also be a shelter and a seat, where visitors can rest and ‘contemplate the mysterious power of the sea’, and interact with it. She wasn’t paid for it; it was not a commission but a labour of love, a gift from the artist for everyone to enjoy.

35 thoughts on “Suffolk Scallop”

  1. I LOVE the poem. I LOVE especially the 2nd and 4th photos here and THANK you for the explanation of the sculpture. How amazing to see this in the middle of a beach! So glad you posted this today.

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    1. Thank you, Christine. Its amazing to look back at pictures taken when the Scallop first went up, when it was shiny and new. A lot of people complained about it back then, but now everyone loves it. We’re going back up the Norfolk coast in the next couple of weeks, to Wells, where there is a rusting metal horse sculpture on the beach.

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  7. The epigraph is powerful proscenium to your own verse encounter with those voices still resonant by and of the sea. About a decade late I now come to Barry Cunliffe’s theory that the Celtic language and culture didn’t migrate from the east of Gaul and Germanic tribes but began actually along the western seaboard of Europe from Spain up to France and Britain, Ireland and Scotland up to the Orkneys, beginning around 4,000 BC with Bronze Age bell beaker culture. (It would later spread east to the Gauls who invaded Rome and settled eventually in Turkey). A sea-faring, sea-singing people still resonant in Britten and your poem.

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  9. Beautifully done. I had to image google the scallop sculpture to see it close up and the rusting wear made me sad. I wonder if one can still sit on it.

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  11. Husband is from that neck of the woods and used to visit Aldeburgh. I’m not a fan of Britten, but I like the Sea Interludes. Peter Grimes is creepy though.

    Your poem, the pebble beach and the rusting scallop have the Sea Interludes as background music. Lovely.

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  14. This is so lovely, Kim! 😍 I especially love; “Suddenly it erupts from the shingle beach,
    a sculpture, two halves of a broken shell like hands extended to a passing gull or a cloud.”❤️❤️

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  15. Oh, what a lovely bit of seaside alchemy—pebbles plotting mischief, a shell that seems ready to applaud a passing cloud, and time itself taking up welding as a hobby. I half expect the scallop to whisper ancient gossip about the tides. Brilliant and delightfully strange! 🐚

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