From the Staithes Museum Newsletter, June 2026. Speaking of poetry this month… Cowbar Nab looks fixed and familiar now, but in the poetry and stories of Staithes it is rarely just a lump of sandstone. It becomes a pulpit, a racecourse grandstand, a weather gauge, and occasionally even a punchline. If you listen carefully, it seems less like a landscape and more like a place that keeps getting re-described by whoever is standing in front of it. ⛪ John Castillo — Cowbar as sacr