When Susan Elderkin starts work on a new book, she looks to the landscape as an indicator of the people who live there.

Invited by Brighton Festival to document her responses to a weekend stay in the city, she found herself drawn again and again to the sea, in between illuminating conversations with smackheads, cab drivers and fellow writers.

What emerged from her pen, read aloud by her in the Spielgeltent, was a lyrical tone poem that, both in the writing and the reading, perfectly captured the ebb and flow of this city on the edge, this liminal space.

Meanwhile, Kwame Kwei-Armah, actor and award-winning playwright, was surprised to have been propelled to a "place of such passion, joy and tenderness", which was a good description of his own reading of Brighton at Festival time.

His piece was written to the tune of a different rhythm, literally scribbled in his notebook as he listened to American jazz giant Billy Cobham storm through his set at the Dome on Sunday, and reflecting on notions of belonging, identity and leadership.

What both "Down From London" writers produced was a kaleidoscope of colourful images both familiar and unfamiliar, reflected back to their listeners through the prism of their all-seeing outsider lenses - and which deserve a far wider audience.

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