ISBN: 978-1-915108-33-3
Publication Date: 26 June 2025
Pamphlet: 36 Pages
Shortlisted for the 2026 Michael Marks Prize, and Highly Commended in the Poetry Business 2024 International Book & Pamphlet Award.
Link to buy Kindle / Ebook Version:
ISBN: 978-1-915108-37-1
Other Ways of Saying
How the light loves the land
in a land that is not mine,
and the letters love to string
and mouth themselves into a line,
how the future loves to grub its fingers into now:
that is how, that is how, that is how.
How the answer loves the further
question that the answer made,
and the constellation loves
anonymity of day,
how the morning loves to carry its burden of sound:
that is how, that is how, that is how.
How the blood loves the heat
that draws the distance thin,
and the kisses love the mouth
and all the unkissed skin,
how forbiddance loves to wink and secretly allow:
that is how, is how, is how, is how.
*
A spurious language exists in books but not outside them. A man at a funeral with ash in his mouth. A rat, a whale off an industrial coast. The recriminations of a body discovered in the street.
Appleby’s debut chapbook of poems follows the translations, between languages and experience, that define our interaction with the world. Restless and shifting in form, serious about humour, never shrinking from difficult subject or technique, it was highly commended in The International Book & Pamphlet Competition, “the most prestigious competition of its kind… launching the careers of many well-established poets” (The Poetry Business).
