In Port-Vendres, the sun rises and sets in poetry

There is the sky, the sun, and the sea. There are also poetic verses and musical notes. It is around 8:45 p.m., Sunday, July 27, on the pier of Port-Vendres (Pyrénées-Orientales), and the reading can begin. "All the thoughts that inhabit me give me the air of a kite." Surrounded by Prêle Abelanet, accordionist, Clara, and Clément Brajtman, jazzy singer and drummer, Claude Faber chants his first verses. This former journalist, writer, and communications officer for the departmental council has chosen to live in the small town of 4,000 inhabitants, a stone's throw from Spain, a close neighbor of the beautiful, more renowned Collioure. Above all, since 2019, he has been offering readings at sunrise and sometimes at sunset with his association Les mots, l'émotion.

"I was doing some readings or writing workshops and I started, with Prêle, in these readings. The jetty seemed to me the ideal place, the morning this propitious moment" , he says . Organized in front of about twenty people at the beginning, the readings have evolved and gained audience. This evening at the end of July, there are about 180 of them sitting facing the sun, at the foot of the lighthouse, on slabs of old concrete worn by salt. Regulars, young people, older people, tourists, ears and eyes wide open, they contemplate the small formation, and the star which slowly sinks towards the horizon. "We choose texts together, we rehearse a little the day before and often the magic happens," explains this poetry lover, author of several works, who has long collaborated with the playwright and director Armand Gatti (1924-2017), met in a writing workshop in 1994.

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