‘The Cruelty Towards Others Like Ourselves… is Difficult to Imagine Here as You Turn to Swim Your Twentieth Length.’ Swimming and Dreaming of Elsewhere with John Berger

Swimming, like reading, is an immersive activity: words wash away, and arise. Engaging with writings by critics who are also swimmers, principally John Berger Maurice Merleau-Ponty, this article explores their about swimming in relation to how being water can ‘conjure stories from the water’, open up particular kinds of reflection reverie. The fluidity spaces creates imaginary that enables intellectually sensuous dreaming, while ebb flow movements identifications establish a poetics as form life writing.