Plunge into mountain lakes and drift along meandering rivers in Elizabeth-Jane Burnett’s lyrical celebration of wild swimming.
A long poem taking many forms, Swims begins and ends in Devon, moving across the waterways of England and Wales: from urban pond to open sea. The poet swims among fishermen on Grasmere, reimagines the body as bottle cap in the Channel, and clambers down the bank of the river Ouse with words scrawled on her swimsuit.
As political as they are personal, these meditations are conceived as environmental acts that probe the relationship between landscape, memory and the self. A sinuous, innovative debut, Swims reminds us of the power of swimming to transform the human spirit, registering what the water gives to us and what it takes away.
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Praise for Swims
These poems flow and sing through salt and sweet water, connecting time and place and spirit in an electric gesture of natural unity. Swims is a wondrous, perfect thing.
Philip Hoare, author of RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR and Leviathan, or, The Whale