Thinking with Ecocritical Poetry: On Surfing, the Ocean and the Planetary Crisis

In a return to recording episodes after a long hiatus, we take a somewhat different approach and discuss watery-oriented ecocritical poetry. Karen chats to Glen about his debut collection of poetry, In the Slowness of Melting (Cape Town: Karavan Press, 2026).

We touch on four topics surfaced by the poems: writing poetry versus writing history; the history and memory of beach apartheid in South Africa; thinking with the ocean to advocate for a politics of care and climate justice, and surfing and the aging body.

An Extract

Paddling

to what pleasure?

sporting hope in dying

waters

From the poem: "Paddle Action"

About the Book

In the Slowness of Melting (Cape Town: Karavan Press, 2026) is a collection of lyric poems that echo the waves in form and reflect in content on surfing, the beach, the ocean and our planet. Moving between the past, present and future, the collection registers internal and external shifts of focus to foreground change and a sense of loss. It reflects on our social world and seeks a more utopian future in the face of our climate crisis. The book is ecocritical poetry infused with a surf goth aesthetic, presenting a sunburnt disposition while thinking with/in the Anthropocene.

The collection curates poems Glen has penned over a few decades, but mostly from the post-Covid-19 period. The poems provide him with a voice he's not been able to include in his historical writing on surf culture. The poems historicise surfing or the beach and reflect on sea-level rise and climate change to frame a poetics of our planetary climate crisis in the Anthropocene.