in in blazing yellow,
tan and light-green fields
under a blue-white sky and
green-black pine trees
is the house at calle de tomás ortuño 59
were sylvia and ted lived
now a seafood restaurant called “freiduria”
they serve “pulpo”
“mejillones”
“sepia”, “fritura de pescado”
and “boccadillos”
and I remembered the postcards
I got from my father
postcards from benidorm
postcards from exotic places
lines of words
in angular, rugged letters
as he always wrote in capitals
in blazing yellow,
tan and light-green fields
under a blue-white sky and
green-black pine trees
I found a photograph
of a man lighting a cigarette
and the man in the photograph
looked just
like dylan thomas
in blazing yellow,
tan and light-green fields
under a blue-white sky and
green-black pine trees
in my mind
you were constantly jumping
jumping on stones
to cross the river
you saw the river and the stones
as seen
through the distorting lens
of a bell jar
and you were dressed in white
always getting your
low, thin cromwell loafer
wet
and in blazing yellow,
tan and light-green fields
under a blue-white sky and
green-black pine trees
you were blue
as a one blue sea
so
turquoise
by droplets
you waited
in blazing yellow,
tan and light-green fields
under a blue-white sky and
green-black pine trees
beside a modern house
disturbed by a large splash of water
created by an unseen figure
who had apparently
just jumped in
from a diving board
in blazing yellow,
tan and light-green fields
under a blue-white sky and
green-black pine trees
my father
was handed
a gin and tonic by sylvia
and in blazing yellow,
tan and light-green fields
under a blue-white sky and
green-black pine trees
their fingers touched
just for a moment
– ”In blazing yellow” – from ”notes from benidorm”, Micael Norberg, 2020-2023
in blazing yellow
tan and light-green fields
under a blue-white sky
and green-black pine trees
Four extracts from letters written by Sylvia Plath to her mother when Sylvia and Ted were on their honeymoon i Benidorm in 1956. But you maybe ask what does Sylvia Plath, Benidorm and Umeå in the north of Sweden have in common? Maybe the colors, maybe the light? Maybe nothing and everything?
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of Sylvia Plath’s literary output in Spain and Benidorm is her treatment of colour. The same colors we see in the autumn here in Umeå.
In a letter dated July 7, 1956 to her mother, she expresses for the first time her enthusiasm for the incredible colors of Benidorm and the Spanish landscape.
“the colors we saw from the train window all the way down were brighter than I thought possible … blazing yellow, tan and light-green fields under a blue-white sky, green-black pine trees, white adobe houses with orange tile roofs” – (LH 261).
So we share the colors, the blazing yellow and green-black pine trees of the north of Sweden, and the longing. The longing for tan and light- green fields, of the summer. And on another level we also share some pain with Sylvia Plath. The pain and sorrow of the unbearable lightness of being.
But maybe most of this is in my writer imagination.
It all started for me a few years ago when I found faded photographs of my father. Photographs taken a long time ago on a sunny Spanish coast. I decided to go to Benidorm. This glittering city of skyscrapers by the Mediterranean sea. The town where Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes spent their honeymoon in 1956. So I decided to travel to Benidorm. I had the hot Spanish sun already shining on my face when the pandemic and other things happened in my life …and suddenly I got nowhere. I stayed behind in the corner of my sofa and what started there, eventually became “notes from benidorm”. A personal story about, longing, pain, mental illnes, art, poetry, my father, Sylvia Plath and Benidorm.
– Micael Norberg, October 1st, 2022
