Morvoren Poetry inspired by sea swimming

Dip a toe or dive straight in; stroll along the sand or race through the surf. Poet Katrina Naomi describes the experience of sea swimming as “being burned alive from the ankles up”.

Morvoren: The Poetry of Sea Swimming is a 32-poem collection celebrating the magic and beauty of sea swimming in Cornwall alongside stunning colour photography and interviews with the swimmers who inspired the verse.

Taking their group name from the Cornish word for “mermaid”, nine female poets in Cornwall and Scilly - Kate Barden, Ruth Eggins, Penelope MacBeth, Abigail Ottley, Polly Roberts, Morag Smith, Hannah Temme, Kerry Vincent and Ella Walsworth-Bell - contacted sea swimming groups including She Swims Falmouth, Manamaids, Morva swimmers and Gylly Swimmers for Wellbeing, in search of women who swam regularly for health and happiness.

They interviewed swimmers (sometimes in the sea!) and created poems as a community collaboration, while photographers Alice Bray and Rita Maureen Hencke got right in the water with the women to create beautiful images that bring the poetry to life. “This is a wholly women-focused and women-created project which aims to create beauty and magic from sea swimming,” says poet Ella WalsworthBell. “Everyone has volunteered time and effort to make this project a success.” A crowdfunding campaign has raised money for editing and design work, ISBN purchase, printing (in Cornwall) and distribution.

“I recognise so much of my own sea swimming in these stunning, anarchic, joyful poems,” says Katrina Naomi. “These poems ask: 'Why wouldn't you swim?'. Read this anthology, and see if it doesn't have you running for the waves, 'nipples like limpets'. Brava to one and all.”

Hear work performed at St Ives Festival on September 12. www.stivesseptemberfestival.co.uk

Find out more about the project by joining the Facebook group @Morvoren: the poetry of sea swimming.

Swimming Free

by Polly Roberts

Leave the child at home, the bedtime duties and washing up too. Leave behind the day’s work and worries, the social commitments and responsibilities.

Take only the dog, a silent best friend who waits on shore.

You have a date with the full moon, whose reflected path you swim, bathing in phosphorescence, thoughts shocked into liquid.

It takes only thirty seconds. Only space.

Physicality takes hold. Gone are the to-do lists, shopping lists, anxieties. Washed away.

People have been saying you’re looking well, that your essence has returned. You re-meet your dog refreshed, pulled by current and moon, back to yourself.