Swims - Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

Swims

By: Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

Paperback | 12 September 2017

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Longlisted for the 2020 Laurel PrizePlunge into mountain lakes and drift along meandering rivers in Swims, the debut poetry collection by Elizabeth-Jane BurnettA 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.

Industry Reviews

If poetry has a value over and above what the market assigns, then perhaps the fluid line and deep currents of Swims can help resist environmental catastrophe.
Richard Lea, The Guardian

A clear-eyed ecological poem that washes off the urban world.
Jeremy Noel-Tod, The Sunday Times

This book refreshes like an icy dip, startling us from both comfort and despair. Burnett's poems invite the reader into the water with them; to take action, accept responsibility, and find joy: "it is all yours, this open possibility".
Emily Hasler, The Poetry Review

A revelatory poetics ... [Burnett] maps coordinates across time and geography, producing a luminous, hallucinatory effect of an endlessly drifting, spinning world.
Srishti Krishnamoorthy-Cavell, Poetry London

Language is at full spate here. We can see why the collection should be considered one long poem, working in the liminal space of merger and separation that matches both the acts of swimming and memory, marked by the pulse of consonantal music.
Andrew Jeffrey, Poetry School

Lush with lyric.
Claire Crowther, Magma

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