Not Waving but Drowning Not Drowning, Waving takes their name from the poem. The underground '90s emo-hardcore act I Hate Myself recorded a song with the same name on their album 10 Songs. A track on Julian Cope's 1991 album "Peggy Suicide" was titled "Not Raving but Drowning" after the poem. The poem was also set to music by singer-songwriter Vic Chesnutt on his debut album Little with a spoken introduction from a Stevie Smith recording. Singer and songwriter Tanita Tikaram set the poem to music in her song titled "Not Waving but Drowning" which appeared as a b-side to her single "I Might
Not Waving but Drowning hanging over her face. Although the image goes with a poem about a man drowning, the girl's expression appears incongruous with the text of the poem as it forms what Severin describes as a "mysterious smile". Jannice Thaddeus suggests that the speaker of the poem, like other figures in Smith's works, changes from male to female as part of a theme of androgyny that exists in many of the poems found in "Selected Poems." The sketch differs from the poem in that the figure is of a woman rather than a man, and Smith scholar Laura Severin suggests that the