Sea Swim

John Wedgwood Clarke

ISBN 10: 1908853069 ISBN 13: 9781908853066

Publisher: Valley Press, 2012

Synopsis

Throughout 2011, Sea Swimmers swam in Scarborough's South Bay as part of imove, the Cultural Olympiad Programme in Yorkshire. They were led into the waves by poet John Wedgwood Clarke, whose eighteen-poem sequence inspired by this experience was collected in book form and published by Valley Press in April 2012.

The poems explore the fluent, fragile and sometimes agonisingly pleasurable relationship between the swimmer, the land and the sea around Scarborough; how swimming transforms the way we feel ourselves to be in our bodies, and the liberating effects these changes have on the imagination.

About this title

Review:

'I am thrilled to be patron of this simple and simply beautiful idea. Poetry is going down to the sea again.' --Carol Ann Duffy

'[Clarke's] work is amongst the best to have emerged from new poets in this country over the past two or three years.' --Simon Armitage

About the Author:

John Wedgwood Clarke was born in St Ives, Cornwall. He trained as an actor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, before going on to study literature and completing a D.Phil. in Modernist poetry at the University of York. He now works as a freelance writer and editor, and is a lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Hull. He lives and swims in Scarborough.

He is the author of Ghost Pot (2013), a collection of poems inspired by the scenery and wildlife of the North Yorkshire coast, and In Between (2014), a pamphlet exploring the snickets, passageways, courts and yards of York.

About this edition

• Publisher: Valley Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1908853069
• ISBN 13: 9781908853066
• Binding: Pamphlet
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 32