Episode 1

A year of discoveries on the beach. Jean Sprackland meditates on objects revealed by the shape-shifting sands, or washed up on the wild beaches between Blackpool and Liverpool.

Recorded on location on Ainsdale Sands, 'Strands' is a book about what is lost and buried, then re-discovered; about all the things you find on a beach, dead or alive, natural or man-made; about mutability and transformation - about sea-change.

In today's episode, Jean contemplates the miraculous re-appearance of the Star of Hope, wrecked on Mad Wharf in 1883, but suddenly raised up from the depths one day - an entire wreck, black and barnacled, taking the air for a while before sinking back under the sand.

Read by Jean Sprackland

Abridged by Miranda Davies

Produced by Emma Harding

About the author: Jean Sprackland is the author of three books of poetry and a collection of short stories. Her most recent poetry collection, Tilt (Cape, 2007), won the Costa Poetry Award. Hard Water (Cape, 2003) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was shortlisted for both the T S Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Award for Poetry. She was chosen as one of the Next Generation Poets in 2004.