The 1st September will see the launch of my debut poetry collection, In the Slowness of Melting published by Karavan Press (2026).
An Extract
Paddling
to what pleasure?
sporting hope in dying
waters
From the poem: "Paddle Action"
About the Collection
In the Slowness of Melting is a collection of lyric poems that echo the waves in form and reflect in content on surfing, the beach, the ocean and our planet. Moving between the past, present and future, the collection registers internal and external shifts of focus to foreground change and a sense of loss. It reflects on our social world and seeks a more utopian future in the face of our climate crisis. The book is eco-poetry – or rather, cli-poetry – infused with a surf goth aesthetic, presenting a sunburnt disposition while thinking with/in the Anthropocene.
The collection curates poems I have penned over a few decades, but mostly from the post-Covid-19 period. The poems provide me with a voice I am not able to include in my historical writing on surf culture – a poetics that offers a personal preface to my forthcoming non-fiction book. Many of these lyric poems historicise surfing or the beach and reflect on sea-level rise and climate change to frame a poetics of our planetary climate crisis.
The book launch event details are available from Karavan Press here. Image by Karavan Press.
Writing Surfing History 