Surfing Brilliant Corners
Surfing Brilliant Corners
ISBN: 9780906720806
Surfing Brilliant Corners details a decade of extreme global surf travel by professional longboarder Sam Bleakley, illustrated with stunning photographs by John Callahan. It takes surfing beyond the waves and packaged surf tourism to a wider sense of place and cultural identity. Sam travels from his birthplace in West Cornwall to Indonesia and the Philippines; through vibrant West African highlife in Ghana, to war-damaged Liberia; to Mauritania, where landmines litter access to some of the best waves on the planet; to a serene Buddhist oasis in Communist China; to Ecuador, Oman and Haiti, whose complex culture seeps into his psyche and captures his heart. He looks deep into the jet-black eye of a surfacing shark in Kenya, and faces a stacked set of foaming lips during typhoon surf in South Korea. Celebrating Thelonious Monk's 1950s album Brilliant Corners, Sam explores how, like great jazz musicians, talented surfers use invention, complex rhythm, timing and spontaneity to turn impossible waves into beautiful and challenging music. 'Surfing,' he says, 'has opened me up, split my skin, widened my horizons, and closed me down, because any obsession restricts your involvement in other aspects of life.'
By Sam Bleakley
Imprint: ALISON HODGE
Release Date:
Format: PAPERBACK
Pages: 192
1 Setting the Pace 2 Haitian Fight Song 3 The Birth of Cool 4 No Brains, No Headaches 5 Taking the Tube to Work 6 Manila Dawn 7 Staying Tuned in Kenya 8 Panamania 9 Buddha on Board 10 Confronting the Kimchi 11 Desert Blues 12 Surfing Away from a Sinking Ship 13 West African High Life... Let Freedom Ring 14 Kick-out Coda
View full detailsAuthor Bio
Sam Bleakley is a writer and professional surfer. He has been a multiple European, British and English Longboard Surfing Champion, and a regular competitor on the Oxbow World Longboard Tour. He has an MA in Geography from Pembroke College, University of Cambridge. He is widely published and featured in international magazines, including Resurgence and The Surfer's Path, and has contributed to numerous surf and travel books, as well as editing The Surfing Tribe: A History of Surfing in Britain.