Swimming in Blue Shadows: A Collection of Short Stories and Poems (Proverse Prize Publications)

Swimming in Blue Shadows is a collection of five short stories and ten poems on diverse subjects and styles, written over a number of years. Each story grew out the author’s personal experiences and in many ways represents a different phase of his life. The subjects of the short stories are: a wild boar hunt, a failed relationship, a Nahuatl flower seller, a bullfight, and a Belizean archaeology expedition. The poems, also, grew from personal experiences or centre on themes of particular interest to the author: AI (Artificial Intelligence), Afghanistan, COVID-19 (Coronavirus), Native Americans, love, depression, death, loss, and youthful exuberance. The title of the collection, a phrase from the first story in it, suggests the nearness of death in its innumerable and nebulous guises, pinpointing especially how the various protagonists face death, as if swimming in death’s blue shadows, hidden yet there.

"The stories and poems of Swimming in Blue Shadows take their themes from many of the issues preoccupying reflective people, especially those struggling to define a credible personal philosophy; fear, love, loss, depression, loneliness, the unknown, the future, death. Throughout the collection, however, and particularly in the stories and somewhat against the odds, we hear underlying hints of an optimism-sustaining faith that eventually all will be well, despite what is evident at first glance. Set against the varied backgrounds among others of Florida wetlands, Belizean forests, hustling Central American streets, arid hills and the scented almond groves of Afghanistan and the depressing pain of a universal Covid pandemic, revelations of discovery rise to the surface. Through personal observation and expression of discovered truths, rather than the single pillar of imaginative construction, the book conveys agreement with John Donne’s ringing words, “no man is an island”, a type of compassion in the tradition of liberal humanism. People with the desire to understand and with a taste for a lyrical story will find Blue Shadows pleasurable and worthwhile."
—Philip Chatting, Winner of the Proverse Prize 2014, author of The Snow Bridge and Other Stories (Proverse, 2015).