For Benedict Donnelly, the pill is bitter. “We launched the process in January and then, suddenly, in mid-March, we gave up in the middle of it,” he regrets, denouncing an “unforeseen and impromptu” decision taken, according to him, in an opaque manner. Beyond governance, it is the lack of elegance towards partners that hurts him. “It’s very unpleasant. I find it distressing, first of all for the members of the jury. These are people who have been doing this voluntarily for years, they don’t deserve to be treated like that. It’s brutal,” he says.
A model out of breath
On the side of the current management, we refute any impulsive decision. Emmanuel de Fontainieu, at the helm of the CIM since 1993, assumes a rational and structural choice, made by the board of directors. “We will not reproduce the Memoirs of the Sea in the future, it’s a choice,” says the director. For him, the classic literary prize model was running out of steam, overtaken by evolving practices. “It’s not simply a question of budget, even if the economic situation is difficult for culture and we are very strongly self-financed,” he explains. Above all, he points to a change in public behavior within his establishment: “We have exactly the same turnover in bookstores this year as last year, while attendance at the CIM has increased. People read less and therefore buy fewer books.” A reality which pushes the CIM to rethink its spaces, with the future project of bringing together the bookstore and the souvenir shop at the end of the course in a large “single point of sale”.
Emmanuel de Fontainieu recalls that the CIM is betting a lot on bringing back “The Hermione”, “this takes resources and energy from us” and judges the real influence of the reward: “We cannot say that our Prize for Memories of the Sea has emerged after twenty years of activity at the national level. There are a lot of prizes in this area.”
Indeed, the CIM wishes to turn the page to embrace the new cultural project of its president Olivier Poivre d’Arvor. “The thematic axis is the meeting between the land and the sea, the question of estuaries, rivers, territory, nature, biodiversity,” explains Emmanuel de Fontainieu. Our project is evolving, which is why we are organizing the Rochefort Meetings in October 2026 on the theme of life, it is a first and a test. » So no more high seas, elsewhere and literary prize ceremonies, the CIM is banking on targeted events or artist exhibitions at like the installation “Totems” by artists Coco Fronsac & Jim Skull.
But Benedict Donnelly does not intend to let his initiative die without reacting. Apart from its built heritage, the former Rochefort resident wonders if “Rochefort still has the ingredients today to make this town a special place to talk about the sea”? Refusing to accept fate, he is looking for a buyer and is wondering what to do next because he hoped to organize “an event this year which would mark the 20th anniversary of the prize.” However, the former president of the Hermione-La Fayette association remembers that, due to lack of partners, the Memories of the Sea festival, organized every two years, was also suspended. He recognizes that to maintain this meeting over several days, the budgetary balance had become untenable.
