How are you shaped by sea?

‘How Water Works’ is a poem created to convey a sense of the enduring power of water and my desire to celebrate and defer to its tenacity. I wanted to convey a sense of the bodily, tactile properties of water and how I emotionally respond when I am in physical and metaphysical contact with it.

The poem is also a meditation on the rhythmic qualities of water – water as a heartbeat of Country under siege from vandals. And I wanted to consider the vast journeys of water; across skies and oceans, epic journeys that bring water back to me, to my home, on my roof, in my ears and on my tongue.

—Tony Birch

Tony Birch is a Fitzroy Blak. He is a founding member of the Melbourne School of Discontent and writer. He is the author of three novels: The White Girl, Ghost River, which won the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing and Blood, which was shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Award. He was awarded the Patrick White Literary Award in 2017. In 2021 he published Whisper Songs, a poetry collection, and Dark As Last Night, book of short stories, which was awarded the Christina Stead Prize for fiction in 2022.