IN A LANGUAGE THAT YOU KNOW

57pp., paperback, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 2017

ISBN 9780803290983

Poems

“Contemplative and lyrical ... ‘When I cannot find you / I give your name to everything.’ Such poems employ the periphery as an active, sometimes disquieting space from which to imagine. Such poems disarm me into sorrow, into hope.” Aracelis Girmay, author of The Black Maria and Kingdom Animalia

“Poems in this book plunge you, without warning, from a mattress on the floor, a village bus stop, or a fishermen’s boat into the depth of human aloneness ... Len Verwey writes: ‘You need to breathe / in stone, breathe out a flower.’ He accomplishes this mission in his book: breathing in history and landscape, he breathes out powerful, fervent lyricism." Valzhyna Mort, author of Collected Body and Factory of Tears: A Lannan Literary Selection

Len Verwey was born in Mozambique. He is the author of the poetry collection Loving the Dying. His chapbook Otherwise Everything Goes On is included in the boxed set Seven New Generation African Poets. He lives in South Africa.