Tidal Bodies / As the Tide Recedes
Miek Swamborn

‘In the sea, one writes without chair legs, footstool and desk. There is no slow work, no more staring out of the window or eating apples. As an underwater writer you have to discard everything, be submis- sive, strap on lead blocks; otherwise, you will float back up to the surface and all the newly written words will ebb away.’ (From The Seaweed Collector’s Handbook)

Layers of different seaweeds tangle and untangle in the current. They are neither liquid nor solid. Rippling they break through the sea’s surface, reticent, but at the same time lascivious in their twists and turns. In their millions of years of existence, seaweed had been a witness to the changes of our coasts and adapted. Their colourful, shapely and buoyant characteristics did not stay unnoticed and appear in works of art and literature since 2000 BC. Miek Zwamborn will share some of these encounters from her anthology in which she swirls, drifts and dives between poems, works of art and design, historical facts, anecdotes, biographical fragments, recipes and scientific research.

*Miek Zwamborn *is a Dutch author and visual artist, graduated at the Rietveld in 2000. She has published the novels Oploper (2000, Meulenhoff), Vallend Hout (2004, Meulenhoff), De duimspong (2013, Van Oorschot ), the poetry pamflet Het krieken van sepia (2008, Slibreeks), the anthology The Seaweed Collector’s handbook (2020, Profile) and the artist books Tamed Skies, Blue Lias, Tireragan, Oology, Arandora Star, Laminaria, Magical Octopus and* Reprocity*. Her work has been exhibited internationally and is translated into English, German, Portugese and Swedish. Miek co-runs the creative art/literature hub KNOCKvologan on the Scottish isle of Mull. See: (link: http://miekzwamborn.nl text: http://miekzwamborn.nl)