Apple Thieves

Alastair Reid Pamphlet Prize 2019Poetry Book Society Recommendations 2012 and 2016Forward Prize for Best Collection finalist 2013Scott Moncrieff Prize for Translation 2013"I love paintings that give us glimpses of ordinary people in rooms that open to other rooms", says Canadian poet Beverley Bie Brahic. "Apple Thieves" is full of such painterly moments and their mystery. "Why this moment, not another one?" she asks in "Root Vegetables", one of several poems about human migrations, "Was famine too abstract for the children we were?". This new collection from an award-winning poet and translator evokes the pleasures of nature, art, and the body, writing with affection, and tenderness for human fragility. Today, living in France, she delights in history's "pissed-on stones", bells that chime the "rich hours of each day", and "the look in early spring / Of fields turned over / Earth well-fucked...". "Apple Thieves" relishes the earthbound in all its sensuousness: "You should eat it hot", "Blackberry Clafoutis" suggests, "Directly from the oven / Though it will still be good / For breakfast, leftover".