These are different waters / Ella Skilbeck-Porter

Deftly working across both verse and visual poetry, Skilbeck-Porter gathers aesthetic experience and layers thought and memory, structuring the collection through the central motif of the municipal swimming pool, where fragments of thought and observation swim and float to the surface. Observational, attentive, and at times surreal, Skilbeck-Porter’s work immerses the reader in a sensory experience that delights the eye and the mind. These Are Different Waters is the first iteration of what Skilbeck-Porter terms a ‘poetics of no division,’ where everything is permitted and boundaries are traversed, emphasising interrelatedness and fluidity without hierarchy. It is a sublime and accomplished debut from a poet who has been working in concrete and verse poetry for over a decade.