Moon Jellyfish Can Barely Swim

by Owen, Ness | Literature & literary studies
Published 03/04/2023 by PARTHIAN BOOKS in United Kingdom
Paperback | 108 pages

Rooted in her island home, Ness Owen’s second collection explores what it is to subsist with whatever the tides bring in poems that journey from family to politics, womanhood and language. In the ebb and flow of an ever-changing world, starlings fall from the sky, votes are cast, a village is drowned, a petrified forest is revealed and messages wash up in seaworn bottles on the shoreline.

Moon jellyfish are 95% water. They have no brain. They live their brief lives being led by the current because, as the title of Ness Owen’s latest poetry collection states, moon jellyfish can barely swim. They are, however, referred to as one of the most successful organisms. What does this tell us? How should this knowledge impact on human life and how we act? In Moon Jellyfish Can Barely Swim, Owen tackles these questions and more. This, her second published collection of poetry, is somewhere floating between classical metaphysical poetry and contemporary ecological flag-waving verse. Like the titular jellyfish, Owen’s verse floats effortlessly between the two to create something unique and beautiful.