Sculling
Electronic book text
Poems
In her unflinching and tenderly obsessive collection, Sculling, poet Sophie Dumont explores a deeply personal relationship to the River Avon, as she circles the curses that unravel from a canoe club.
At the age of 16, Sophie Dumont trained to be a canoe coach before her own coach and partner of three years died suddenly in an aquaplaning road accident, which led to five of his organs continuing at least seven people's lives. His heart was donated to a young man studying in the same city as he did. Using the kayak as a vessel to traverse life's accumulation of losses, Sculling speaks of how this bereavement caused Dumont to reflect on her relationship to bodies of water, from her own body to the state of pollution in UK rivers. Here, she explores the campaign for rivers to be given personhood status for rights to protection and inspects the symbiosis of her body and the river's. Sculling is a powerful investigation into categories of haunting, from a body living on through donated organs, through dementia's slow erasure and through witnessing her niece learn object permanence - that things continue to exist when they are not visible. Through this fiercely vulnerable and meticulous debut, Dumont probes the urge to call out when under a bridge, to hear oneself ricocheted back, changed: '. . .a boy in a red cap opens his throat, throws sound into shadows, as we've all done, in the reckless hope of its return.'Buy now!
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- ISBN: 9781472159960
- Author: Sophie Dumont
- Pub date: 02.10.25
- RRP: $29.99
- Format: Electronic book text
Author
Sophie Dumont
Sophie Dumont is a Bristol-based poet and copywriter for two charities. She trained to be a Canoe and Kayak Coach in Bristol and the Brecon Beacons and was accredited on her 16th birthday, making her briefly the youngest coach in the UK. Sophie's work has been published widely and has been broadcasted on BBC Radio Bristol. In 2019, Sophie won Bristol's Hammer & Tongue Poetry Slam. Sophie's poetry has been shortlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize 2021, the SaveAs Writers' International Writing Competition 2021 and twice for the Bridport Prize. In 2018, she was appointed poet-in-residence on Bristol Harbour by Boat Poets and toured her work in Bristol's Arnolfini, Plymouth's Barbican and London's Southbank Centre. From 2015-2020, Sophie was writer-in-residence and voice artist for Riptide, an immersive theatre company in Leeds. She wrote three productions, including an app-based experience using GPS satellite navigation, consisting of a 360 binaural sound walk along the river Aire. In 2021, Sophie was awarded a place on the Genesis Jewish Book Week Emerging Writers' Programme, on which she was mentored by George Szirtes. In summer 2022, she was awarded writer-in-residence at Exeter Custom House by Literature Works. Sophie co-runs Satellite of Love - a monthly poetry night aboard a lightship in Bristol's harbour.