Towards a littoral poetics

The three poems collected here form part of a larger project exploring the littoral zone of Australia’s southern coastlines. The littoral zone is the intertidal region — alternately covered and uncovered by the tides — and extends to include shallow reefs, beaches, and the spray zones of rocky coasts. It is a place of transition, where terrestrial sand dunes give way to tidepools and kelp gardens, where waves rise and break across the sea floor, and where life-forms shift from breathing air to drawing oxygen from water. It is a space of vibrant unpredictability, a familiar yet complex landscape of entangled ecosystems and diverse species. This project arises from a desire to draw attention to the interwoven lives of species such as the leafy seadragon and its fragile kelp habitat, and to consider how humans might connect with the more-than-human world in ecologically conscious ways. My poetry asks how a littoral poetics might both raise awareness of the intertidal bioregion and enact a sense of human interconnection with the kelp and seaweed, animals, dune grasses, coastal plants, oceanic movements, and the weather systems of the southern littoral zone.