Sculling

Sophie Dumont's debut collection of poems, Sculling, circles the curses that unravel from an Avon-based canoe club, where she trained to be a canoe coach aged 16. Dumont's own coach and partner of three years died suddenly in an aquaplaning road accident, which led to his heart and five other organs being donated. Sculling explores how this bereavement has caused Dumont to reflect on her relationship to bodies of water, from her own body to the state of pollution in UK rivers. She uses the kayak as a vessel to traverse life's accumulation of losses. Amongst great grief, poems soar with humour and a searing openness when talking of sexual health, dementia and being an aunt. With vulnerability and obsessive observation, Sculling speaks of the dull mirrors of a wet city and the narrator's need to 'understand the rain's inclination to its gutters'.