‘The natural beauty of British coastlines has long inspired writers to pick up their pens’, writes The Letters Page’s Amy Plant as she discovers the surprising links between a Virginia Woolf classic and our latest published letter.
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The latest contributor to The Letters Page, Clive Cass, has an avowed passion for art history, and in his spare time ‘read[s] a lot of factual information on art and artists’. So what better way to thank him for his letter to us than with a year-long subscription to the arts and culture magazine Aesthetica?
Clive Cass reflects on his journey of self discovery and emotional expression in this interview, demonstrating the power of the letter as a tool of self-reflection and as a mode of expressing gratitude to those who have helped us on our path.
Clive Cass’s letter to us reveals that writing is a deeply personal and artistic act. Here, Maria Rocha reflects on historical artistic depictions of letter writing, showcasing an evolution from divine to domestic themes, and emphasising the emotional power and creativity inherent in letters, even in today’s digital age.
Nay Saysourinho reflects on the power of stamps and letters, emphasising their potential to carry emotional and historical weight. Her creative process intertwines personal storytelling and artistic expression, demonstrating how small gestures can leave lasting impressions.
The one-of-a-kind letter featured in our latest aerogramme comes from Nay Saysourinho. This letter immediately stood out to us because it featured five unique stamps. They were all commemorative stamps, with four displaying art from prominent artists, and one commemorating the 2017 total solar eclipse visible in North America.
Beginning with its name, which foregoes capitalisation, the Canadian literary journal untethered questions established rules. Prioritising what is innovative over what is traditional, the journal collates abstract and diverse contributions into its biannual publication.
‘When you write a letter, you think about it. A text, you just fire off. A letter is quiet and slow.’ The submission chosen by The Letters Page for the upcoming volume is a letter Catharina van Bohemen wrote to her fifteen-year-old granddaughter, who recently lost her best friend. I interviewed Catharina and discussed her account of walking the Camino de Santiago and its ongoing resonances, even though she walked it many years ago. We talked about coping with grief, mortality, creating connections with unfamiliar people, the invisible force of destiny, and a myriad of other topics.
The latest letter to feature in The Letters Page is by Catharina Van Bohemen, who writes a deeply reflective letter to her granddaughter attempting to comfort her in the face of the loss of her best friend.
In her letter Catharina uses the pilgrimage genre as a motif of human interconnectedness, drawing parallels between her walking the Camino de Santiago and her families’ lives to explore what loss and tragedy mean to us. Her letter is a powerful statement on the way that the people we love are permanent fixtures in our life’s journey and will therefore never truly leave us.
When Harriet outlined the stepping stones of her early publishing career, she described its trajectory as ‘very much Letters Page, internship, assistant role’.
All Zoom meetings start with a slight pause as the microphone connects, and a relief when you can see each other on-screen and hear each other clearly. This was the only pause in my conversation with Harriet Dunlea, as we talked about university, The Letters Page and all things publishing.
Harriet worked as a student on The Letters Page in 2015, and is now Head of Books at Carver PR. She remembers learning about The Letters Page in a lecture and ‘feeling really, really happy when I got it because it was tangible experience that I get to do in Nottingham, where there aren’t that many opportunities to do publishing work experience.’
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