Nebulous Vertigo - by Belle Ling (Paperback)

About the Book

"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."--

Book Synopsis

Formally daring poems that ask a compelling question: if fate can never be changed, how can we embrace its weaving?

The realm that belongs to Nebulous Vertigo is both visceral and vibrant, and it is mysteriously familiar. If you come close to it, you will hear how rains eat, how a silken tofu revolts, how the Chinese word for "beans" turns into a speaking persona, and how a telephone bridges the surviving and the afterlife. In Nebulous Vertigo, everyday life is inevitably lost to the inevitable fate. And yet, with unexpected quivers, our fate and life keep surprising us.

Traveling through the cha chaan 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 the 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.

Review Quotes

"In a year when the frenetic ambitions of generative artificial intelligence and its effects on our sense of truth, capacity for attention, and creativity have felt increasingly toxic to poetry, I've sought my antidote in books that follow the tracks of human feeling in slow, perceptive time. Hong Kong poet Belle Ling's début collection, Nebulous Vertigo (Tupelo Press) reverberates with the tangible presence of the sensuous world. Several poems recall a writing teacher who mocked her use of colloquial words and corrected them to the standard forms. Now artificial intelligence revises us as if it knew best."

-- "Australian Book Review, "Books of the Year 2025""

"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, author of Orphic Paris and Gravity and Center: Selected Sonnets, 1994-2022"

"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 début 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"

"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"

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, the Merit Scholarship of the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and the Playa Residency Fellowship in Oregon. She is also the author of A Seed and a Plant and holds a master of creative writing from the University of Sydney and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Queensland. She teaches at the University of Hong Kong.