For the Love of Seasticks by Katy Bentall

Drawings and poetry by Katy Bentall

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At what point
does the river
become the sea?
Just at that place
which is
a little fresh
and a little salty.

In For the Love of Seasticks, Katy Bentall steps out of her cottage to meander the East Anglian fishing hamlet of Felixstowe Ferry and its environs on the Deben Estuary. Her field equipment: a pot of ink and a flotsam stick for drawing, the latter selected from the artist’s collection. Maybe on this day she’s chosen her favorite.

Pursuing the logic of whims, she might weave between the Ferry’s not-one-but-two cafes, the fishmonger’s shed, and plenty of signage bearing weighty pronouncements; or into the boatyard, past the harbor master’s hut, riversea in sight; or along the coastal trail to the shingle beach, where sea cabbages congregate.

Wherever she goes, Katy rapidly sketches, her stick a recording device twirled into action by the artist, herself twirled into action by the ink-dipped stick, the two snagging as much as possible of the all-consuming end of the salty eroding world.

Working with these sticks is thrilling and terrifying at the same time / Twirls are when I think I’ve made a mistake / but then never mind / twirls become ether / pulled to the sea / as if my stick is pulled by the tides / That’s what it is— / to draw at the Ferry

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2026
Edition of 500
68 pages, paperback, 19×24 cm, b&w offset, sewn & glued
Printed on Arctic Munken Print Cream 115 and Pure Rough 300
Edited by Marysia Niedziela
Designed by Pilar Rojo
ISBN 978-83-68165-08-1

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Katy Bentall is an artist and poet. She is the author of Greenwriting (Bored Wolves, 2022), a haibun weave of prose, poetry, pencil drawings, and paintings exploring quotidian and seasonal rhythms in the Polish countryside. Through her Punnet Press, she is the author of handmade zines including Pear Man, Blackbirds and Cherries, With Wrack and Gravel, and, most recently, Tender Observations on the Hill.

Her forthcoming zine Rockwork (Bored Wolves and Punnet Press, September 2026), a stand-alone companion to For the Love of Seasticks also set at Felixstowe Ferry, documents a colossal coastal defense building operation through a series of stick drawings. She is currently at work on Promenade Pearls, a strolling study of the port town of Felixstowe.

Katy divides her seasons between the countryside of eastern Poland, where she collects twigs and seeds, and the East Anglian coast, where she collects flotsam and jetsam.