From Land's End to the Oasis

In this piece I trace a constellation of authors who use swimming (or being immersed in water) to record the world around them in a new way. The swim-travelogue appears as a hybrid of travel writing and nature writing showing affiliations with New Nature Writing. However, as this sub-genre is slowly absorbed by women and people of colour moving it away from its more traditional author profile—white and male—rights that were taken for granted are re-questioned leading one to ponder about barriers to nature, water, and swimming. Continuing this dialogue, I add my voice—an immigrant in England from an ex-colony of the British Raj—as I swim along an imagined spiral that connects the world of swimming in England to the world beyond its shores.