Battery Rocks – ‘a meditation on nature, risk, swimming & the sea’ – was published this week by Seren Books.

I read many books in the writing of Battery Rocks. One of the biggest influences is Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, The Sea, if I had to choose my favourite novel of all time (a tricky one this), I’d probably choose The Sea, The Sea. Battery Rocks contains the poem ‘Golden Shovel: After Iris Murdoch’ and there’s another reference to The Sea, The Sea in a poem towards the end of my collection.

There are so many poetry collections, novels & memoirs that inspired me in the writing of Battery Rocks, here are a few of them:

• Monique Roffey – The Mermaid of Black Conch (Fiction)
• George Mackay Brown – The Storm (Poetry)
• Elizabeth-Jane Burnett – Swims (Poetry)
• Anna Selby – Field Notes (Poetry)
• Leanne Shapton – Swimming Studies (Memoir)

I’ve also written in response to many other poets’ work in Battery Rocks, including: Leo Boix, Byron, Louise Gluck, Terrence Hayes, Denise Levertov, Amy Lowell, Kim Moore & Sharon Olds, with Peter Redgrove & Penelope Shuttle being constant inspirations for my poetry.

You can read ‘Fickle Lover’, the opening poem of Battery Rocks here.

You can buy a signed copy of Battery Rocks from me for £13.99, including postage, here (UK only) or direct from my publisher Seren for £13.09 (UK), shipping internationally available via Seren. You can also buy Battery Rocks from most good bookshops.

Battery Rocks has won the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors and contains ‘in the kelp forest’, which won the Keats-Shelley Prize for Poetry.