FPG Sounds: Lucia Dove, ’The eel’

Focal Point Gallery is pleased to announce the eighth commission as part of ‘FPG Sounds’, an online project to support the development of new sound works by artists from or based in Southend-on-Sea.

For this commission, writer Lucia Dove has created a new poem which explores the shared cultural histories between fishing communities of South Essex and the Netherlands. ‘The eel’ focuses on the migration and life cycle of the glass eel, a common delicacy with a shared cultural history between the mudflats of South Essex and the Frisian Islands of the Netherlands. Explored through sound and memory, the commission follows a dedicated period of research, with Dove spending time with an eel fisherman in Friesland, the Netherlands, as well as on location in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, including Osborne Brother’s and the Leigh Heritage Centre.

Click here for a full transcript of the commission. 

Lucia Dove is a writer from Southend-on-Sea living in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She is interested in heritage, landscape and food studies and their connection to ideas about home and homesickness. Her latest book VLOED (Dunlin Press, 2021), a work of creative nonfiction, explores the shared cultural memory and landscape between Essex and the Netherlands in relation to the North Sea Flood of 1953. More information about her work can be found at www.luciadove.co.uk or find her on Twitter @LuciaDove.