Eaten by White Ants

“A truly form-defying collection, Eaten by White Ants is a deeply embodied project of language reclamation, containing images and phrases that won’t soon leave its readers. The long poem 'in die hart van die miernes (among the Myrmidons)' calls to mind Jan Zwicky's recent chapbook Say It in the way it lays out its brutal, relentless accounting.” Laurie D. Graham
"Here is poetry as resistance and renewal for languages lost, cultures looted, silenced histories retrieved and recalibrated into a visionary work both timeless and immediate." Kevin Irie, author of Evacuations
"Midgley’s lapidary virtuosity and exactitude draw on the art of translation and meaning-making, treating the mechanics of language as a landscape of memory and reckoning. His inventive and singular collection offers an attentive exploration of form and linguistic inheritance. The poems here not only confront memories of colonial violence but also cast a backward glance at the innocence and intimacy embodied in a mother tongue before erasure or disappearance. What unfolds is a compelling, luminous inquiry into what language preserves, what it yields, and what remains when we seek to reacquaint ourselves with what was once lost." Jumoke Verissimo, author of Circumtrauma
"Eaten by White Ants reads like a catch in the throat. I hear and become part of a long wail that follows through languages—the linguistic, metaphorical, rhetorical—an invitation to witness and participate in the archaeological untangling of colonial violence." Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, author of A Is for Acholi
"Eaten By White Ants is a strikingly self-aware collection that grapples with the language of colonial legacy as much as the artistry of the heart. There is a beautiful tension between the teaching tools of language and the practice of poetry. But there is a vital love story here, too: the poet's lost and re-lost access to the language that once spoke to him and of him as vitally and centrally as calf's blood. This is an ambitious and erudite collection that manages throughout to create the necessary room for relearning love." Bertrand Bickersteth, author of The Response of Weeds