Christian Billing’s poetry on this page aims to make these complexities accessible through artistic practice, capturing the often conflicting ways of seeing this coastline, and the lives intertwined with it.

The cycle of poems presented here focuses on Spurn, Easington, and Kilnsea – carefully anthropomorphising the South Holderness coast, giving it a voice without resorting to ventriloquism—allowing the coast to speak through human perspective without forcing a human narrative onto it. These poems also acknowledge the resilient flora and fauna, which cling to or return to the coast through migration.

In addition, the poems reflect on the human history of inhabiting the coast, the difficult prospect of retreating from cherished spaces, and the possibility that this coastline may offer a way to restore the damage inflicted by humans on the non-human natural world, particularly through ecological forms of carbon capture.