In Battery Rocks Katrina Naomi returns to the Cornish swimming spot – Battery Rocks in Penzance – every day for a year. On each swim, she finds something fresh and invigorating, whether this is an encounter with a bull seal, an insight into the conflict in Palestine, or a realisation about herself.
Alongside poems exploring the sea in all its mercurial forms – rough and calm, wild and healing – she examines issues of fear, strength and vulnerability. Writing in response to an attempted rape and other experienced attacks, she questions how she can feel safer alone, in a raging sea in winter, in nothing but a swimming costume, than on dry land.
These poems also approach the climate emergency from aslant, offering several new takes on one of the most pressing concerns of our times. Finding joy through immersion in nature, Battery Rocks is a thoughtful meditation on nature, risk, swimming and the sea.