John is the one trying to get you to brave the North Sea in Sea Swim!
John Wedgwood Clarke is a poet, editor and teacher who specialises in producing text for public art works, usually through collaborating with local groups and communities. He’s written poems for benches on the Wolds Way, opened The Shop of Priceless Things with Electric Angel, worked with the team who are rejuvenating The Cinder Track between Scarborough and Whitby and has helped create a typographical artwork at the Thornton Lodge Community Centre in Huddersfield. His work has been shortlisted for the Manchester Poetry Prize and the National Poetry Competition. John is director of the Beverley Literature Festival and the Bridlington Poetry Festival, UK and Ireland editor for Arc Publications and also teaches poetry at the University of Hull. At present he is working on a new sequence of poems about the North Yorkshire Coast commissioned by Chrysalis Arts, and on a single poem commission for the Mercer Gallery’s forthcoming Atkinson Grimshaw: Painter of Moonlight exhibition. John’s ‘Scarborough Elegies’ are the inspiration for Sea Swim and are currently featured in the South Bank Centre’s anniversary celebrations of The Festival of Britain.
Simon Armitage has recently said: ‘his work is amongst the best to have emerged from new poets in this country over the past two or three years.’
A Glimpse into Sea Swim
Scarborough, writing and taking the plunge! Filmed at South Bay on a cool June day with brave swimmers and a foolhardy cameraman....
Castle Headland, read by John Wedgwood Clarke
Scarborough poet and avid Sea Swimmer, John Wedgwood Clarke, reads 'Castle Headland', one of his Scarborough Elegies....
imove and… sea swim
Our Sea Swimmers finish the sentence 'i move and...' to tell us how they feel when they move....
Lara talks Sea Swim
Keen swimmer and creative Lara Goodband tells us about Sea Swim....
Sea Swim
If you go down to the beach today..... Swimming in the open sea is a simple, free and timeless pleasure. It can be exhilarating; it can make us feel sharper and more alive; it can give us the space to look at the world from a fresh perspective and can bring us to our senses....
Sea Swim – Claire tells it like it is
Our sea swimmer, Claire, gets straight to the point......
Sea Swim through a club member’s eyes
We asked Sea Swim club member, Ella, to tell us about sea swimming....
The thinking behind Sea Swim
John Wedgwood Clarke explains how Sea Swim came about and about how swimming helps free his imagination....
