Sea Library

This week, the Sea Library turned seven.

No loud celebration, just the quiet unfolding of summer. Outside my window, the meadow has begun to bloom – clovers, buttercups, and other wildflowers nodding gently in the breeze. The trees have shifted into their full green. The sea is near, as it has always been.

Seven years ago, I opened the Sea Library in a small room close to the water. I didn’t know what would come of it. I only knew I needed to gather books like shells on my shelves, share them with others, and see where the written words about the sea would take us.

Now, seven years later, the collection has grown from 100 books to 1000 and something is changing or rather – evolving.

The Sea Library is still here and flowing in new ways. I have closed the physical doors for a while, yet the library continues to move through letters, books, postcards, and quiet exchanges that drift across borders like sea birds in flight. And this room – now hidden – continues to grow like a coral reef, like a stranded ship covered in barnacles and pearls: rich and strange. One day, it will re-open as a unique artwork, a library, a keeper of the soul of the sea. But now, I must explore the many ways to connect with you, my friend – with the community that cannot live without the sea.

On Wednesday, on its seventh birthday, the Sea Library opened a new chapter: a published series called Letter to the Sea.

These are real letters, sent in from people all around the world – each one a message to the sea. They are thoughtful, poetic, surprising. The first arrived from Neil, in St Ives, Cornwall. It was published on sea-library.com and a new one will follow every Wednesday – as long as there will be a new letter. This week I received the first three.

Neil writes:

“I write this letter to you, the sea, from the sea. The same sea. Glistening, silvered, golden sea. Unknowable sea. Even after swimming in you daily for near ten years now, you remain unknowable. You, sea of my heart, sea of my dreams.”

This new adventure reminds me what the Sea Library has always been: not just a collection of books, but a living, breathing community of sea-hearted people. Those who go down to the beach. Those who are watergazers. Those who are swimmers. Those who listen to waves. Those who write. Those who read. Those who paint. Those who surf or sail or dive. Those who never leave the coast. Those who feel the pull of the horizon and want to share something of themselves with others who feel it too.

The Sea Library’s journey is no longer about a room – it’s about the spaces we create across distance. It’s about conversation, imagination, and the deep quiet joy of knowing the sea connects us, wherever we are.

Seven years ago, I started something. Now, it is starting something new in return.

The meadow is blooming. Summer has come. And the Sea Library is moving like a current, steady and beautiful.

If you feel called to write your own Letter to the Sea, you’re warmly invited. You can get my address, by writing to beachbooksblog@gmail.com (or by deciphering it on the received enveloped). I can’t promise that the sea is listening, but I am. So is the growing sea community.

Happy birthday, my dear Sea Library.

With love,
Anna
Sea Librarian