Welcome to Brackish by Katie Treggiden
Hello, you! Welcome to Brackish. This is where I share spoken word poetry and personal essays as well as my podcast. Join me to receive nature-inspired poetry in your inbox and on your doormat – yes, actual snail mail!
Before you read on, could you do something for me?
Take a deep breath in….
….and exhale slowly.
Better? I thought so.
I am writing from the Cornish coast, and I have created Brackish to bring you a breath of salty sea air wherever you are in the world; a glimmer of poetry, reflection and nature connection — a borrowed moment just for you.
Sound good?
Subscribe
Subscribe to Brackish to receive a poem in your inbox every Friday afternoon and my podcast every other Wednesday (ish!).
(OR, if you prefer, you can turn off emails and download the Substack app to read them there – more info on Substack at the bottom of the page).
Upgrade
Upgrade to a paid subscription for just £6 a month / £60 a year to receive a poem in your inbox every Friday afternoon, my podcast AND fortnightly personal essays and a tiny collection of printed poems on your doormat every month – that’s right, actual snail mail!
Become a founding member
Or, if you really want to support my fledgling efforts to become a ‘proper poet’, you can become a founding member for £160 a year, which gets you all of the above PLUS a signed copy of my latest book, Broken, and my eternal gratitude.
NB If you are buying an annual subscription / founding membership, please note that I can’t offer a refund if you change your mind. If you are unsure, go for a monthly subscription, which you can cancel at any time.
What do people say?
‘Thank you Katie for this beautiful poem and reminder to catch our breath in unexpected moments’ – Constance Whittaker
‘Brackish is such a welcome pause in my day when it comes. There’s always something to make me stop and think – thank you for sending!’ – Jen Pavich
‘Katie, I’m just loving your poems. Every time they land in my inbox, they feel like a gift! – Marna Fujimoto-Pihl
Why ‘Brackish’?
Brackish (adj): somewhat salty.
Brackish is a term used to describe water that is a mixture of saltwater and freshwater, for example, where a river meets the sea. I first encountered it sitting in a boat in just such water and it immediately became one of my favourite words. I am fascinated by intersections, liminal and littoral spaces, overlaps and interconnections, and I want to use this space to explore all of those things – the ideas that don’t fit into neat boxes.
Brackish (adj): unpalatable, repulsive.
As well as meaning ‘somewhat salty’ in very neutral terms, Brackish has also come to mean ‘unpalatable’ or ‘repulsive’. I didn’t know this until after I decided upon it as a name, but as a woman in her middle years, who is relearning how to take up space, I am so here for that alternative definition! From occasional ‘salty’ language to refusing to adhere to feminine standards of… well, anything, I am leaning into my brackish era!
Who is Brackish for?
If you’ve got a strong back and an open heart, if you’re spicy-brained and/or queer in any sense of the word, if you don’t fit into neatly defined boxes, if you’re learning to lean into your inner rebel, if you’re an advocate or a champion, if you write, make or mend, if your middle years are cracking you wide open, if you’re feeling the call of the wild, if you yearn for the sound of a river meeting the sea – you’re entering your brackish era too and you’re very welcome here.
Who is Katie Treggiden?
I’m Katie Treggiden (she/they). I am a spoken word poet, a craft, nature and sustainability writer, a certified Blue Health Coach™ and the author of Brackish here on Substack. I grew up in Cornwall and as a child, I took for granted that you could catch mackerel for the barbeque from a day boat, find grasshoppers between molehills on the lawn, and watch bats catching insects at dusk. When I returned in 2017, it was not the county I remembered. There were no longer enough mackerel for it to be worth taking a boat out fishing, and as for the grasshoppers, molehills and bats? Nowhere to be seen. In fact, the Living Planet Report published by the WWF in 2024 estimates a 73% loss in biodiversity in roughly the time I’ve been alive. That stat, and the lack of meaningful action to reverse it, breaks my heart daily.
But Baba Dioum said,
In the end, we will conserve only what we love;
we will love only what we understand.”
So I am a storyteller. If I can help people to understand and connect with nature through my poems, short stories, books and Blue Health Coaching™, perhaps we can reverse that decline.
I am also a woman in my middle years who is feeling ‘the call of the wild’ so strongly that it sometimes feels selfish to honour it. But this work is not just about the planet, because if ‘we are nature healing herself,’ we need to heal ourselves too.
My books
I have been a full-time writer since 2012 and have written six books about craft, design and sustainability in that time.
Who I’ve written for
As well as being an author, I am a journalist. In fact, in 2021, Homes & Gardens awarded me their Eco Champion award for Thought Leadership – the first time a non-designer has been recognised in their annual Design Awards. I write for newspapers, magazines and online publications such as the following:
My own publications
Brackish is not my first rodeo! I have always loved having a space where I can write the things that publishers and editors won’t commission. I conceived, launched and edited the independent print magazine, Fiera 2014–2016, which was shortlisted for Best Launch in the inaugural Stack Awards and nominated for Best New Magazine in the Magpile Magazine Awards 2014. I also wrote a blog called confessions of a design geek 2010–2017, which won mydeco’s Best Interior Design Blog in Great Britain just five months after I started writing it – no pressure, Brackish! ;)
Who is Katie Treggiden? (No, really?!)
Work stuff aside, I love dogs (especially spaniels and sighthounds). I am not a cat person and spiders scare the bejeebus out of me. I am a bookworm and a water baby; happiest either with my nose in a book or in/on/near water. I am a sea ‘dipper’ (‘swimmer’ would be an exaggeration!), part-time paddleboarder, and avid, if not particularly bendy, beach yogi. I am currently walking the Cornish Celtic Way (Cornwall’s answer to the Camino de Santiago) and writing a book about it. I am happily childfree (like I said, I’m a dog person!). I have a playful and silly sense of humour – you will never catch me laughing at someone. I have late-diagnosed AuDHD, fibromyalgia and perimenopause, which is quite the combo, let me tell you! And I’m 45, so if I’m lucky enough to make it to 90, I’m exactly halfway through – all of which is cracking me wide open.
Come on in – the water’s lovely!
I wanted to create a space for Brackish subscribers (free or paid) to introduce themselves (yourselves!) to me and to each other. This is that space.
Kick off your shoes, roll up your trousers and join us for a paddle. Let us know your name, your pronouns, and your favourite blue or green space.
Wtf is Substack?!
Good question! If you’ve been online for a while, you will remember the glory days of blogging – when you checked your favourite blogs every morning before your emails. When Twitter was somewhere you could go for a bit of gentle escapism (I know!), Instagram was barely out of diapers and podcasting hadn’t even been invented. Substack is the closest thing we have to combining all of that into one platform – and they’ve done the hard work of pulling together all your favourite content.
So rather than hunting around the internet for blogs on different people’s websites, scrolling through the nonsense to find the people you actually follow on Instagram (I’m assuming you’ve long since left X!), or paying for newspaper subscriptions when you only read the weekend lifestyle and culture sections (who, me?!), you can simply subscribe to the writers you love – and, if you want to, you can support their writing by upgrading to paid or founder member status.
Then, you just sit back and wait for their articles (or, in my case, poems) to land in your inbox – or you can download the Substack app and switch from mindless scrolling on other platforms to nourishing reading on this one.
I love it here – I hope you will too.
Stay curious, imperfection and defiantly hopeful,
Katie x
PS You might also enjoy my other Substack Wasted // Broken // Grown where I am serialising my two most recent books and crowd-funding my advance for the next one!
