Swimming - charlie bayliss

“Baylis’s ’swimming’ is one of those rare, romantic sequences that manages to both play with language while taking language incredibly seriously. Poems take surprising syntactical turns, and elliptical images are always resurfacing, like Baylis’s own divers coming up for air. ’swimming’ is a kaleidoscopic exploration of love, pop culture and memory; it is a pamphlet that takes pleasure in the subjectivity of each object: streets blister, moons sweat and poppies cartwheel. Oscillating between bitter skepticism and yearning nostalgia, Baylis’s poetry, in the best possible meaning of the phrase, is haunted by its own content and language.”er in expectation and uncommon delight.”  Sarah Fletcher