Swim Litany is a visual text and spoken word score published as an A3 poster. One side presents a range of information sourced from diary records of my swims from mid-summer 2025 to mid-summer 2026. This data includes references to place, to bodies of water, to those I swam with. On the other side textual material is organised into three areas, each section having a different character, with the potential for performance by one, three, or more voices.
Swimming is something that I do, it is part of my life, and I fit it around other things – weather, work, travel, health. Senses of rhythm, of repetition, of the social activity of swimming are evident in the printed poster and in performance. Interruptions to the rhythm and variations in the text record the impact of the rest of life on my swimming, while the writing acknowledges my appreciation of access to safe water and my physical ability to swim regularly.
For a live event on August 27th 2026, a group of performers gave a rehearsed reading of the text. Performing as a ‘speech choir’, their voices mixed, blended, and bumped against each other as they navigated the three sections. Rhythm, repetition, overlap and silence depended on the character of the sections, and the speakers’ responses to the words and awareness of each other.
The publication and performance were presented as part of the Bathing Places exhibition which ran through the summer of 2026 at 37 Looe Street, curated by gallery directors Angela Piccini and Sefryn Penrose.
Performance:
1800hrs on Thursday 27th August 2026 at 37 Looe Street, Plymouth, as part of the Bathing Places exhibition.
Performers:
Rachael Allain, Paul Beaumont, Mo Bottomley, Benjamin Brake, Elena Brake, Katrina Brown, Charlie Cornforth, Rosanna Irvine, Sam Machell, and Matti Spence
You can listen to an audio recording of the performance HERE