This volume of poems takes its inspiration from the coast of Pembrokeshire in West Wales. Not only does it draw much of its material from a series of walks there, it also formally accommodates the dynamics of movement and rest, combining reflections on the natural world with imaginative excursions into history and folklore. This pattern yields different types of poems: some contemplating large themes, others recording passing observations. This ebb and flow of mood and purpose is significant tot he larger aims of the collection – its testing of creative territory invites us to think again about the relationship between land and sea, present and past, self and other.
The distinct yet related representations of landscape in the book are exemplified in the opening two poems: the first, ‘Sandscape After Hours’ reflects on how a sandy beach brings the experiences of strangers into temporary proximity, as traces of different lives are super-imposed on one another. This image introduces what will be a key impression of the volume as a whole; a sense of fleeting connection from which pleasure and inspiration can derive. For metaphors of endurance we must turn to the second poem, in which the rocks of ‘Westphalian’ become a dynamic force; a similar sense of torsion occurs to greater effect in ‘Lady Cave Anticline’ – ‘She is still relatively young, /though pressured on all sides/ forced to bend and arch’. Everywhere in the volume relative degrees of natural force are evident, made manifest in geological solidity and in the endlessly changing face of the sea. For Hinshelwood, these two states – the fixed and the mutable – cannot be separated, and the poems contemplate the difficulty of accommodating both in language. This difficulty accounts for the considerable shifts in tone that occur throughout the book, from amused observation to deeper reflection. The accomplished title poem itself enacts this transition, from the initial conversational idiom to the closing meditation on a new experience of embodiment.
Acts of witness are important: we are always aware of the speaking subject – a walker on the shore who is conscious not only of nature as inspiration but of herself as a figure in that landscape, especially in such poems as the light ‘Skinny Dipping’ and the sombre ‘Unexpectedly’. This awareness emerges again in ‘Bazaar’ where self and the other merge through the mirrored space in which the speaker browses. At times, this self-consciousness can come between reader and experience, but often it helps us to see the space in a new way, such as the opening of ‘Intent’:

In this puddle, stretched right to left
across the sand, blue sky is reflected.
White clouds hare over the ground.
A girl splashes through air
her plaits swinging.

The angle of view is all-important here, as it is in ‘Daughter’where the separateness of the girl staring through the window into the dark interior of the bar is made more resonant by the emptiness of the final frame: ‘the square of light where you had been’. It is in this tension between enduring emotion and feleting impression that On Becoming a Fish acknowledges the contingent nature of all experiences, and the space and time needed to explore them.