Re-learning How to Swim Breast-Stroke
Hannah Linden
The high tide mark is a wedge fifteen feet above us. We’ve waited for the turn of the tide, scrambled down the steeply-stacked pebbles to the water to meet the sea coming back to greet us. This last piece of summer, September-warm sea. My son practises putting his head underwater but keeps breathing in at the wrong time, comes up spluttering. He’s old enough now to take failure in his stride, tries again.
This is his work now—catching up for lost time, trusting that he will not drown. We know the history of this place—how a whole village fell into the sea because of one man’s greed and lack of compassion. We know that storms take what they can to re-fill the holes dredged where people take what they shouldn’t.
But for now, it’s all about breathing out whilst you’re under the surface, pushing your arms down so you catch enough water to pull you high enough above the water-line.
Hannah Linden is neurodivergent, queer, from a working-class Northern background but lives in ramshackle social housing in Devon, UK. Her most recent awards include 1st prize Cafe Writers Poetry Competition 2021, Highly Commended Wales Poetry Award 2021, and 2nd Prize Leeds Peace Poetry Prize 2024. She is published widely eg in Acumen, Atrium, Blackbox Manifold, Iambapoet, Lighthouse, Magma, New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, Setumag, Shearsman, Stanchion, Stand, Tears in the Fence, The Rialto, Under the Radar etc. Her debut pamphlet, The Beautiful Open Sky, (V. Press) was shortlisted for the Saboteur Award for Best Poetry Pamphlet 2023. BlueSky: @hannahl1n.bsky.social
‘Re-learning How to Swim Breast-Stroke’ received an honourable mention in The Prose Poem’s 2024 Prose Poetry Competition.