Old Paris leaves its clues everywhere, like the way the old street names remain in some places, only crossed out.
Author: Anna Evans
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On Visiting the Dylan Thomas Boathouse, Laugharne
I am thinking of a photograph on a beach somewhere on that trip to Wales. Dark clouds and grey sea. There is synchronicity in the image; our faces are together, touching in the half light. When photographs were still like slips of chance on the paper. Thinking about being outside as night fell in the mountains, sharing a bottle of wine; jubilant in the almost total darkness, with no lights to guide us home.
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The Street Walks In, Or, Paris is Porous
My title, And The Street Walks In, is from a passage in Good Morning, Midnight, one that comes to mind on my visit to Paris. It is one of the most arresting moments in the book. The street walking in, a striking image. As though the street were coming to summon her back, to reclaim her.
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Tracing a route
Tracing a route through the books and touching sometimes on the journeys Rhys herself took, I am mapping them through place and through a series of journeys, starting from London in Voyage in the Dark, to Paris in Quartet, the Paris and London of After Leaving Mr Mackenzie, and returning to Paris in Good Morning, Midnight.
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What they call an impasse
A cheap hotel in Paris. Hotel rooms often figure in Jean Rhys books, and this particular hotel is situated in an impasse, that most evocative of French place names. They can be found everywhere in Paris, and often they are named. Threaded through the book are some possibilities that might help me to pinpoint its location, and from the map I can identify a few lines which lead to nowhere, dead ends.
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Olลกany Cemetery
Connected to our beginnings and ends, people wander through cemeteries to be close to those who are no longer here. Each city, each place, contains the imprints of all those who have walked its streets and all those yet to come, the ghosts of history who are with us even now. In some places we are more aware of them than others.
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In the Back Seat
The back seat is the site of stories and of daydreams, the ones which come without being summoned, like a ritual to trace over the back of your hand. The speed and the motion allowing glimpses, partial and unformed, always passing and never fully realized. From the back seat I am always looking for places that will tell me stories.
The Street Walks In 