AFTER YOU WERE, I AM
This is a preorder. After You Were, I Am will be released this September, with copies mailing prior to release.
An extraordinary debut from Camille Ralphs, heralding the arrival of a major new talent. In After You Were, I Am, charged moments from history collide with our own godless modern world. The book’s three sections—rewritings of canonical prayers, dramatic monologues from the Pendle witch trials of 1612, and the divine tragedy of the Elizabethan magus John Dee—obsess over individual human characters, and how our past informs (and informs on) our present. This is poetry as incantation, plea and invocation.
Drawing on a vast range of influences, from sacred texts and early modern drama to metaphysical wit, twentieth-century Confessionalism and contemporary irony and mistrust, this ambitious debut embodies the variety and singularity of living voices past and present, which through rapturous music, anarchic wordplay, and formal distortion are dragged to breaking point. The very history of the English language glows through the cracks. The effect is a terrestrial transcendence, as spaces within and between human thoughts expand to reveal a shared heritage of faults and answerless questions at every turn. Ralphs’s style is utterly distinctive; she is a modern metaphysical, maker of poetry that in comprehending the past manages to make of it something utterly original and contemporary.
Praise for After You Were, I Am
“After You Were, I Am was at least a decade in the making, and the strength of the poetry is a measure of the crisis it confronts. […] First the stylish translations and imitations of canonical prayers, with their inflections of humour and modern living; next the closet drama of the Pendle Witch Trials, with Ralphs’s empathetic ventriloquism of these isolated, beleaguered souls in agony; and finally the fully imagined monologues of [John] Dee, a figure who is neither victim nor moral exemplar. […] Ralphs’s talent for subsuming her ego in her subjects […] gives her a gravitas few think to look for anymore.”
—Ange Mlinko, London Review of Books
“Ralphs’s mischievous, metaphysical debut riffs on great religious poets, revisits the victims of the Pendle Witch Trials and explores the life of Elizabethan conjuror John Dee.”
—Tristram Fane Saunders, “Top 50 Books of 2024,” The Telegraph
“Camille Ralphs’s After You Were, I Am brings a medieval spirituality vibrantly into the modern world.”
—Rishi Dastidar, “The Best Poetry Books of 2024,” The Guardian
“It’s a rare debut collection today that dares to be difficult, to be theologically complex, to be theological at all. Yet After You Were, I Am showcases an ambition, seriousness and wit that make it strangely timeless. […] beautiful […] irreverent […] terrifying […] impeccably researched […] jaw-dropping. It’s impossible to do it justice in less than a dissertation, but […] I expect to be re-reading it for years to come.”
—Luke Kennard, The Telegraph
“A contemporary approach to metaphysical poetry that is serious without being lofty. […] It is rare to come across a book of poems in which a forensic approach to phrasemaking sits on the same seesaw as an ambitious exploration of history and religious belief.”
—Matthew Welton, Times Literary Supplement
“From the outset of After You Were, I Am, the reader embarks on an astonishing adventure […] There is an eerie, quivering, steampunk depth to Ralphs’ poetry. The writing grounds itself in a type of earthy empathy for ‘the workers of this world,’ as well as historical figures, but effortlessly straddles the spiritual and fantastic, too.”
—Jennifer Lee-Tsai, The Guardian
“That Ralphs forms and reforms such disparate voices […] is an indication of her dexterity of voice, scholarship and capacity for holding attention. […] Novel, in many senses of the word: the characters and their worlds, violences, desires and delusions draw one in; novel too, in the best tradition of newness—connected viscerally, sometimes viciously, to what’s gone before.”
—Padraig O’Tuauma, The Poetry Review
“Ralphs’ first full-length collection is dense and strange, but definitely superb […] Ralphs has a whole crackling lightning nervous system charging throughout, which brings the gods (often God) down from somewhere above with electric clarity—and clarity is what Ralphs’ tricky, tricksy poems are never without.”
—Austin Spendlowe, Oxford Review of Books
“The collection is, in a sense […] a miniature library, brought alive by Ralphs’ electric ability to inhabit its periods and personalities. This is a collection that steps bravely into the Holy row that has been blazing for centuries—and makes thrilling poetry out of the racket.”
—Andrew McCulloch, The Manchester Review
“Both touching and wittily current […] the language as delicious as the narrative is compelling.”
—Martina Evans, Irish Times
“Camille Ralphs’ disconcertingly accomplished debut […] finds words of fire for our exhausted secular age. […] I could write a thousand words about Ralphs’ collection and barely have begun.”
—Rachael Mann, The Tablet
“Disapproving despair is offset by lines of radical beauty […] Blakean in their fidelity to British numinous experience […] setting the scene for the unnervingly brilliant presence of the hapless Dee in the final sequence. […] Its electrifying legacy will not, one hopes, pay the price of calling up and sounding out the magus.”
—Kirsten Norrie, PN Review
“It’s exquisitely wrought and breathtakingly beautiful but, like George Herbert’s The Temple, there are no cheap sideshow stunts here. Form and function reanimate the dead and in their fragility and mortality we see ourselves.”
—John Field, Poor Rude Lines
“This book has earned its plaudits: Ralphs is a highly original poet, a technically brilliant prosodist given to flights of dextrous wordplay, with a disorientating gonzo theological focus that renders her nothing short of a ‘modern metaphysical.’”
—Kevin Power, Wild Court
“Ambitious and effervescent […] I think my favourite book of the year.”
—John Clegg, London Review Bookshop’s Books of the Year
An extraordinary debut from Camille Ralphs, heralding the arrival of a major new talent. In After You Were, I Am, charged moments from history collide with our own godless modern world. The book’s three sections—rewritings of canonical prayers, dramatic monologues from the Pendle witch trials of 1612, and the divine tragedy of the Elizabethan magus John Dee—obsess over individual human characters, and how our past informs (and informs on) our present. This is poetry as incantation, plea and invocation.
Drawing on a vast range of influences, from sacred texts and early modern drama to metaphysical wit, twentieth-century Confessionalism and contemporary irony and mistrust, this ambitious debut embodies the variety and singularity of living voices past and present, which through rapturous music, anarchic wordplay, and formal distortion are dragged to breaking point. The very history of the English language glows through the cracks. The effect is a terrestrial transcendence, as spaces within and between human thoughts expand to reveal a shared heritage of faults and answerless questions at every turn. Ralphs’s style is utterly distinctive; she is a modern metaphysical, maker of poetry that in comprehending the past manages to make of it something utterly original and contemporary.
Praise for After You Were, I Am
“After You Were, I Am was at least a decade in the making, and the strength of the poetry is a measure of the crisis it confronts. […] First the stylish translations and imitations of canonical prayers, with their inflections of humour and modern living; next the closet drama of the Pendle Witch Trials, with Ralphs’s empathetic ventriloquism of these isolated, beleaguered souls in agony; and finally the fully imagined monologues of [John] Dee, a figure who is neither victim nor moral exemplar. […] Ralphs’s talent for subsuming her ego in her subjects […] gives her a gravitas few think to look for anymore.”
—Ange Mlinko, London Review of Books
“Ralphs’s mischievous, metaphysical debut riffs on great religious poets, revisits the victims of the Pendle Witch Trials and explores the life of Elizabethan conjuror John Dee.”
—Tristram Fane Saunders, “Top 50 Books of 2024,” The Telegraph
“Camille Ralphs’s After You Were, I Am brings a medieval spirituality vibrantly into the modern world.”
—Rishi Dastidar, “The Best Poetry Books of 2024,” The Guardian
“It’s a rare debut collection today that dares to be difficult, to be theologically complex, to be theological at all. Yet After You Were, I Am showcases an ambition, seriousness and wit that make it strangely timeless. […] beautiful […] irreverent […] terrifying […] impeccably researched […] jaw-dropping. It’s impossible to do it justice in less than a dissertation, but […] I expect to be re-reading it for years to come.”
—Luke Kennard, The Telegraph
“A contemporary approach to metaphysical poetry that is serious without being lofty. […] It is rare to come across a book of poems in which a forensic approach to phrasemaking sits on the same seesaw as an ambitious exploration of history and religious belief.”
—Matthew Welton, Times Literary Supplement
“From the outset of After You Were, I Am, the reader embarks on an astonishing adventure […] There is an eerie, quivering, steampunk depth to Ralphs’ poetry. The writing grounds itself in a type of earthy empathy for ‘the workers of this world,’ as well as historical figures, but effortlessly straddles the spiritual and fantastic, too.”
—Jennifer Lee-Tsai, The Guardian
“That Ralphs forms and reforms such disparate voices […] is an indication of her dexterity of voice, scholarship and capacity for holding attention. […] Novel, in many senses of the word: the characters and their worlds, violences, desires and delusions draw one in; novel too, in the best tradition of newness—connected viscerally, sometimes viciously, to what’s gone before.”
—Padraig O’Tuauma, The Poetry Review
“Ralphs’ first full-length collection is dense and strange, but definitely superb […] Ralphs has a whole crackling lightning nervous system charging throughout, which brings the gods (often God) down from somewhere above with electric clarity—and clarity is what Ralphs’ tricky, tricksy poems are never without.”
—Austin Spendlowe, Oxford Review of Books
“The collection is, in a sense […] a miniature library, brought alive by Ralphs’ electric ability to inhabit its periods and personalities. This is a collection that steps bravely into the Holy row that has been blazing for centuries—and makes thrilling poetry out of the racket.”
—Andrew McCulloch, The Manchester Review
“Both touching and wittily current […] the language as delicious as the narrative is compelling.”
—Martina Evans, Irish Times
“Camille Ralphs’ disconcertingly accomplished debut […] finds words of fire for our exhausted secular age. […] I could write a thousand words about Ralphs’ collection and barely have begun.”
—Rachael Mann, The Tablet
“Disapproving despair is offset by lines of radical beauty […] Blakean in their fidelity to British numinous experience […] setting the scene for the unnervingly brilliant presence of the hapless Dee in the final sequence. […] Its electrifying legacy will not, one hopes, pay the price of calling up and sounding out the magus.”
—Kirsten Norrie, PN Review
“It’s exquisitely wrought and breathtakingly beautiful but, like George Herbert’s The Temple, there are no cheap sideshow stunts here. Form and function reanimate the dead and in their fragility and mortality we see ourselves.”
—John Field, Poor Rude Lines
“This book has earned its plaudits: Ralphs is a highly original poet, a technically brilliant prosodist given to flights of dextrous wordplay, with a disorientating gonzo theological focus that renders her nothing short of a ‘modern metaphysical.’”
—Kevin Power, Wild Court
“Ambitious and effervescent […] I think my favourite book of the year.”
—John Clegg, London Review Bookshop’s Books of the Year