SA: You write so vividly about swimming and how your body experiences water. Do you see similarities between swimming and poetry? How do you think they speak to one another?
BW: Sometimes I feel like my writing has no rhythm, but it definitely comes and goes. I’m not someone who gets up at 5 a.m. to write every day. I write when I have something to say, when an idea comes to me, or when I need to. I was returning from a trip to L.A., sitting in the backseat of a cab, when I suddenly had an idea. I pulled out my phone and started writing it down—even though it made me carsick. One thing that has surprised me about swimming is how different the ocean can be from one day to the next. Some days, the tide is calm. Other days, there are strong currents. Lately, there have been tropical storms, and you see reports of people being swept out to sea. Even in our relatively protected cove, we’ve had waves so big they’ve knocked me over as I was trying to get out of the water. It’s unpredictable. There have even been reports of people being bitten by sea lions. But we’re in their habitat, too. We’re entering their world.
Your book touches on surgery, recovery, and healing. Writers also face setbacks—creative droughts, doubt, rejection. What helps you recover when your writing life feels interrupted?
“Healing” is a strange word for me. I have chronic stuff—a connective tissue disorder that can’t really be healed. It’s more about managing and recovering. It’s interesting when I talk about swimming in the Bay. People say, “You’re very brave,” and assume I’m some kind of marathon swimmer, when really I’m swimming maybe 100 feet or 100 yards. I’m not in the water for athleticism. I’m just there to be in the water, to play, and to experience my body differently.
One of the things that initially drew me to the water was hearing that cold water could help with inflammation. That wasn’t really my experience. But I did find that having fun with my body was helpful. It gave me a different relationship with my body. Writing is similar, in a strange way. I don’t really experience writer’s block. I go through periods when I don’t feel like writing at all, then phases when I write a lot. I’ve learned to be patient with whatever is happening. I worked as a journalist for a long time, so if someone needs me to write something, I can sit down and do it. But creative writing is different. I can’t always force it. Sometimes I just have to wait for it to return.
Throughout the collection, there are moments when the boundary between human and animal seems to dissolve—encounters with gulls, mallards, and other water creatures. Did writing these poems ever make you feel as if you were inhabiting another body or consciousness?
I wouldn’t say I was inhabiting another kind of body. Humans aren’t naturally aquatic, but we’ve always coexisted with water. What I find interesting in the water is that most marine life doesn’t seem to treat you as a scary human there to hurt them. They sometimes treat you more like a part of the ecosystem, and I think that’s really cool. On land, I’m constantly rescuing tired bumblebees in my backyard or talking to birds. It’s a reminder that we aren’t separate from the land, the water, or the creatures around us. We talk a lot about “humans versus nature,” but I don’t really believe in that distinction. To me, it’s always humans and nature. Catherine Breed, who is swimming along the California coast, said she was doing it to get people interested in clean water and in preserving our coast. That stayed with me. I think people tend to care a lot more about the environment when they’re able to be in it—to experience it, rather than just think of it as something separate from themselves.
You mention how marine mammals see you as part of their ecosystem. In one poem, you write that the waves feel more welcoming than the air. What about water offers a sense of belonging that land—or even air—sometimes doesn’t?
When you get into the water without a wetsuit, you eventually become comfortable. You no longer feel the cold as you did when you first entered. Your sense of temperature shifts. Then, when you get out of the water and the wind hits you, the cold rushes back, even if the air temperature is warmer. That’s what I was referring to. On another level, as a person with a chronic condition, it’s nice to be in an environment where I can float, where gravity is less demanding and I can take some of the pressure off my body for a while. I can jump up and down and move in ways that feel different from how I do on land. It’s also one of the few places where no one can reach me. My phone is back in the locker room. No one needs me right then. It’s a welcome break from the land. And then there’s that moment when you get out of the water. You can feel yourself becoming heavier and heavier as you return to gravity—to your body, to the ground.
You mentioned earlier that the ocean can be nurturing one moment and dangerous the next. Do you experience your writing life similarly, where creativity itself can feel precarious? How do you navigate those shifting emotional tides?
I definitely experience that. Maybe I write a poem a month, but last month I wrote five or six. I took a trip to L.A. and had a break from my routine for a few days, which helped. I’m also doing historical research that’s sparking ideas. When I dig into places or do research, I find inspiration in unexpected things. I’ll ask myself, Is this going to be an essay, fiction, or a poem? I also do a lot of sewing, stitch doodling, and gardening. I have many creative outlets that I switch between. If I don’t feel like doing one, I’ll do another. So I don’t necessarily feel like I’m not being creative just because I’m not writing. Collage is one of my favorite things. My dad subscribed me to The New Yorker, and I’ve been making collages from it. I’ll take a few words from a passage and pair them with images. I go through phases when collage feels easier than writing. I think I’ve learned I don’t have to force myself to create in one particular way. Sometimes the writing is there; sometimes it isn’t. But something else usually is.
You talk about how everyone enters the water differently. How do you enter the space of writing? Is your approach different when you write poetry versus nonfiction?
I feel like it’s harder to describe how I write nonfiction. I’ve been a journalist for so long that I can write almost anytime. For me, it feels like two distinct forms of observation. With my cemetery book (“San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History”), much of it came from reading historical newspaper articles and noticing information that could become a good story. There was a story in the book about a man who set up living quarters outside someone’s family tomb. The newspaper described where he lived, how he slept, and how he got food. I thought it was fascinating. It showed that cemeteries were active places for a while, not just places where people went to visit the dead. With nonfiction, I feel like I’m mostly putting pieces together. I’m gathering information, verifying the facts, and figuring out how they fit.
Poetry feels different. It starts with what I’m noticing around me, especially in the poems in this book. One of the things I was trying to do was simply be in the water and present to what I was experiencing. Sometimes lines would come to me while I was swimming. With nonfiction, I feel more concerned about sticking to the facts. With poetry, it feels more like an alternative consciousness—a way of describing what I see around me that is less logical and less linear. I don’t necessarily need to know where the poem is going. I can follow an image, a sensation, or a line and see where it takes me.
Your previous work explored cemeteries and landscapes of memory, while this collection turns to water. How did your earlier book shape this one? What drew you from land to this more fluid, untamed landscape?
A little of it was about the potential healing properties of cold water, especially for joints. I also missed swimming from childhood. I have many friends who swim regularly, and I admire their dedication. That inspired me, too. Both Bonnie Tsui’s Why We Swim and Caroline Paul’s book (“Tough Broad”) include chapters about swimming, and those chapters made me think more seriously about getting back into the water. The logistics initially seemed complicated. Did I need a wetsuit? There were no rental wetsuits in my size. Finding a swim buoy for my waistline was hard. I had to figure out all these little barriers before I could even get started. Eventually, I did. I started going to the Dolphin Club and the South End Rowing Club, where you can drop in to swim and then use the showers and sauna afterward. Having those resources made it much easier to overcome the logistical hurdles. I started swimming without a wetsuit mostly out of necessity, and then I discovered that my body was fine without one. I ended up enjoying the direct experience of the water. I joined the Dolphin Club last month. Someone once told me, “You’re only a real swimmer if you don’t wear a wetsuit.” I’m not sure I agree. But I do like the feeling of getting into the water as I am, without another layer between me and the water.
Water in your work often feels almost supernatural—alive, atmospheric, and mysterious. Have you ever had an experience with water that felt impossible to explain, yet found its way into your writing?
I wouldn’t say there’s a single experience. Many things come up for me when I’m swimming. A couple of times, I’ve thought about people who had recently drowned. Another time, my partner’s grandmother died, and her ashes were scattered on the water. In East Bay Ohlone traditions, Alcatraz is associated with a place where spirits go before continuing westward on their journey into the afterlife. So there’s already a lot of history and symbolism surrounding death and the afterlife in the water. I find myself thinking about those things when I’m swimming. Sometimes I dedicate a swim to someone who has recently died. I think about that person and what it means to enter the same water where people have mourned, remembered, crossed, drowned, and scattered their loved ones’ ashes. I keep coming back to our relationship with water. It’s not just something we swim in. Water holds so much of our history and our imagination. We depend on it, play in it, fear it, mourn in it, and return things to it. I think that’s part of what I’m thinking about while I swim.
Are there books about swimming that have shaped how you think about it? What has the practice of swimming taught you beyond the physical?
I don’t reread books that often because there are so many I want to read. I read one this year, Swimming with Seals by Victoria Whitworth, about swimming in northern Scotland, and I really loved it. There’s something about the culture around swimming that I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten into it. If you look at American swimming videos, there’s often a focus on improvement—tips for making your stroke better, swimming farther, going faster, and training more efficiently. I watched a documentary about a woman in Wales with chronic migraines who swam in cold water for 100 days and found that her migraines were reduced by about fifty percent. I could relate to that in some ways. For me, though, swimming is more of a calming activity. I think there’s an interesting cultural difference between Europe and America in how we approach these things. There’s an American tendency to turn everything into self-improvement—to make it more efficient, measurable, and productive. Maybe that’s connected to capitalism, too. How far did you swim? How fast? How much did you improve? That’s one of the reasons I liked Swimming with Seals. It felt more meditative. It was about being in the water with seals and experiencing that environment, rather than trying to become a better swimmer. At the Dolphin Club, people ask, “How was your swim” or “How is the water?” rather than “How far did you go today?” or “How far did you swim?” And there are places where people are even more competitive about it, where swimming becomes another thing you’re supposed to be good at. I’m interested in what happens when swimming doesn’t have to be about improvement at all—when you can just be in the water.
What’s next in your pipeline? Are you working on any more projects?
Definitely no more books for now. I’ve been slowly working on a collection of essays, poetry, and hybrid pieces about trees that have been important to me. I’m frustrated with the essays because I’m still trying to find the right way to say what I want to say. There’s also a lot of mythology in them, and I know readers can sometimes be challenged by it. I also have a podcast, Red Dead Reckoning, and we are recording new episodes for our third season.
Bio: Beth Winegarner is a journalist and writer who’s contributed to the New York Times, the New Yorker, The Guardian, and many others. She is the author of several books, most recently “San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History” and “Swim Poems,” and she is the co-host of the Dead Reckoning podcast. website: www.bethwinegarner.com
“Swim Poems” purchase link: https://bottlecap.press/products/swimbw
Swetha is an MFA Graduate from the University of San Francisco. The author of a memoir and three chapbooks, her works have appeared in Had, Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, Gone Lawn, and others. A member of the Writers Grotto, her stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fiction, and Best Microfiction. She can be found on @swethaamit on Instagram and @whirlwindtots on Twitter