ISBN: 978-1-915108-33-3
Publication Date: 26 June 2025
Pamphlet: 36 Pages
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).
Spurious Language by James Appleby
Revisions
I’ll be young with you still. One stroke of pen
cancels a decade: our unfaithful room
evicts new tenants, guts our suitcases.This is the mess all things should be.
The floor mattress holds us in its arms,
electrics falter at heart-pace.Don’t ask why we always have champagne.
There’s no economy in nostalgia:
no limit to your pouring down my throat,bubble-drunk, not yet twenty, everything
defining us instantly. You slip new art
under the door like an intimate note,or forgive me, not like that at all.
I am so given to comparing things
and stalk our memories like a jealous third.*
Rhythm
Juan Cristóbal Romero
translated from Spanish by James Appleby
Qué mal puede haber en seguir
el ritmo oculto de las cosas.
Qué mal en marcar con los pies
el golpe de lluvia en las pozas…What could the harm be? To follow
things’ hidden rhythms. To play
the beat of the march of our footsteps
to the beat of the puddles in rain.So what? With a sound as a compass,
or your eyelids as two tambourines?
Kick a beat with you—exhausted
beat at the secret of things.And just like the tomcats were only
above us the one rooftop scream,
the roof tiles, like broken pianos,
complained in their shattering keys.What could the harm be? To follow
things’ hidden rhythms. The way
an oatfield will curve on a hillside
when the wind runs its hands through the grain.So what? With a sound as a compass,
or your eyelids as two tambourines?
Seal in your lips now—the softest
beat at the secret of things.
James Appleby is the editor of Interpret, a new magazine of international writing, where he has featured winners of the International Booker Prize, the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, the King’s Gold Medal for Poetry, and US National Book Award for Translated Literature.
James has read his original poetry at festivals across Europe and is a fluent speaker of French, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese. His translations have been featured at individual events at the French Institute of Scotland and the Sofia Literature & Translation House. In 2025, he was a translator-in-residence for the 60th anniversary of Modern Poetry in Translation.
Spurious Language is James’ debut. He was born in 1993 and works in Manchester.
For updates, additional translations, and contact:
www.jamesapplebywriting.co.uk
www.interpretmagazine.com
IG @interpretmagazine