Nebulous Veritgo

$19.95

by Belle Ling

Nebulous Vertigo, a debut collection of poems from Belle Ling, is a gentle whirl of undulations inviting us into a transcendent realm. The realm, both visceral and vibrant, is mysteriously familiar. If you come close to it, you will hear how rains eat, how a silken tofu revolts, how the Chinese word of “beans” turns into a speaking persona, and how a telephone bridges the surviving and the afterlife. The everyday life, in Nebulous Vertigo, is inevitably lost to the inevitable fate. And yet–with unexpected quivers, our fate and life keep surprising us, so we need to stay moving “unless pushed or pulled.” Travelling through the cha chann teng in Hong Kong, you can hear how Mrs. Suen, Mr. Yuen, and Waiter Kuen carry out intriguing conversations; astounded by the night sky in Paris, you will see how constellations narrate the lovers’ quirky destiny; and all way through the Sayama Hills in Tokorozawa, you will be surprised by the turnings and upturnings of the myths told by a Japanese Uncle. Nebulous Vertigo, as its title beckons, “sighs an unreal cloud / for the fated sun to rise.” If fate can never be changed, how can we embrace its weaving? Every attempt, as the poems suggest, can be calmingly adventurous, unobvious yet magnanimous.

by Belle Ling

Nebulous Vertigo, a debut collection of poems from Belle Ling, is a gentle whirl of undulations inviting us into a transcendent realm. The realm, both visceral and vibrant, is mysteriously familiar. If you come close to it, you will hear how rains eat, how a silken tofu revolts, how the Chinese word of “beans” turns into a speaking persona, and how a telephone bridges the surviving and the afterlife. The everyday life, in Nebulous Vertigo, is inevitably lost to the inevitable fate. And yet–with unexpected quivers, our fate and life keep surprising us, so we need to stay moving “unless pushed or pulled.” Travelling through the cha chann teng in Hong Kong, you can hear how Mrs. Suen, Mr. Yuen, and Waiter Kuen carry out intriguing conversations; astounded by the night sky in Paris, you will see how constellations narrate the lovers’ quirky destiny; and all way through the Sayama Hills in Tokorozawa, you will be surprised by the turnings and upturnings of the myths told by a Japanese Uncle. Nebulous Vertigo, as its title beckons, “sighs an unreal cloud / for the fated sun to rise.” If fate can never be changed, how can we embrace its weaving? Every attempt, as the poems suggest, can be calmingly adventurous, unobvious yet magnanimous.

A SUMMER OPEN READING PERIOD SELECTION

About the Author

Belle Ling was born and grew up in Hong Kong, China, and has lived in Australia. Her poems have won a number of awards, including the Peter Porter Poetry Prize (2018), the Merit Scholarship of the New York State Summer Writers Institute (2017), and the Playa Residency Fellowship in Oregon (2014). Her first poetry collection A Seed and a Plant was shortlisted for The HKU International Poetry Prize (2010); her poetry manuscript Rabbit-Light was highly commended in the Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize (2018); and her other poetry manuscript Grass Flower Head was shortlisted for the First Book Poetry Prize of Puncher and Wattmann (2018). Her poems have been widely shortlisted and highly commended in different contests, including Aesthetica’s Creative Writing Award, the Atlanta Review’s International Publication Prize, the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest, the International Proverse Poetry Prize Anthology Place Award, and the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Queensland and an MCW from the University of Sydney. She is now teaching at The University of Hong Kong.

Advanced Praise

“Belle Ling writes with a clean line, a sharp eye, and a heart attuned to the nuances of delight and grief. Nebulous Vertigo is a stunning debut collection. Poems such as ‘This Heart Eats,’ ‘What are you Really,’ ‘To Return,’ ‘Bagpipes, St. Patrick’s Day,’ ‘One Intimate Morning,’ and the title poem, release their depths slowly, surely, and powerfully.” —Kevin Hart, Duke University

“An inventive and feeling mind flowers everywhere on these pages, and for me the banal anxieties of our modern world seem blotted out by a delightful new energy.” —Henri Cole

“In Nebulous Vertigo, Belle Ling dances across the page with a highly original voice, chasing an ‘I’ that flees from itself and “these / bright sorrows under the sun.” The visceral pleasures of the present fall into our hands as Ling encounters objects—rain, soybeans, tangerines, phones, tea, mirrors, tofu—in pursuit of her evanescent self. Weaving together poems, visual artworks, and ideographs, Ling overleaps the grids and borders of cultures and genres with delicious ease, taking us with her in astonishing poems: ‘Breathe, / be ricocheted, be wings.‘” —Judith Bishop, author of Circadia

Format: Paperback
Published: May 2025
ISBN: 978-1-961209-18-3