To Drown as a Cure for Thirst: Poems

by Blake Auden

Overview

The fifth collection from poet Blake Auden, To Drown as a Cure for Thirst, is a delicate exploration of grief and how it affects—and is affected by—time and memory.

Written in the wake of a global pandemic, the book touches on themes including loss, healing, personal reflection, mental health, and love, even in the face of the things that haunt us. Auden's most personal and deeply honest collection to date, these pages examine the idea that we can overcome what winter has taken, and that to hurt is simply an act of remembering.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771682794
Publisher:	Central Avenue Publishing
Publication date:	10/04/2022
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	112
File size:	992 KB

About the Author

Blake Auden is a poet, writer and artist living in Brighton, UK and has published several poetry collections: To Drown as a Cure for Thirst, Tell the Birds She's Gone, Beekeeper, The Things We Leave Behind, and Murmuration.

Blake won the Button Poetry 2020 Short Form Prize and has been featured by the likes of The Mirror, The Bookseller, Family Friends Poems, The Good Quote, Thought Catalog and numerous others.

Growing up with a father in the military, Blake began reading war poetry from an early age, where he became fascinated with the ability of prose to capture both deeply traumatic and cathartic experiences. Blake's work now focuses on loss, heartbreak and mental health.

Table of Contents

1

Tell Me Something Good 3

A Loop 5

I Have Carved Your Name into My Breastplate 6

We Don't Let Go 7

I Haven't Grieved 8

Exit Wound 9

Static 10

Heavy Light 11

Time, Running 12

Wye 13

Let Me Show You What I Know About Time 14

A Lullaby for Insomnia 16

Another Small Weight 17

Because You Loved Her 18

I Can Still Bleed If You'll Let Me 19

Sunday, and It's All a Matter of Perspective 20

There Is Little Point in Moving Only to Welcome Stillness 21

How to Carry Softness 22

The Memory is a Second Grave 23

2

Under 27

I'm Afraid to Die 28

I Don't Know How to Change 29

Tuesday, 25 May 30

Heartbreak is Habitual 31

Thirty-Seven 32

Still Can't Sleep Without Dreaming 33

A Maiore Ad Minus 34

I Know Not What It Is to Forget 35

It Shouldn't Feel Like Winter 36

It Is Only In Light That We Know Ourselves 37

Let It Kill You 38

An Exchange of Tiny Sculptures 39

Panic, and Then Breathe 40

You, Like All of Us 41

I Have Forgotten How to Dig 42

It's Not the Fall That Kills Us 43

Today 44

Every Surface Holds the Color of Blood 45

It Is Always the Past That Holds Us 46

To Drown as a Cure for Thirst 47

The Only God I Know is the Thing That Breaks Me 48

3

What of Us Will Be Left, But Our Doubts 51

Standard-Bearer 52

I Can Still Choose to Stay 53

All that Dark and All that Cold 54

The End and Beginning of All Things 55

Turning Quiet 56

Nothing New 57

Paper Town 58

ARS Poetica 59

Dolorosa 60

To Shed a Limb 61

The Body Remembers 62

To Yearn Is to Speak Your Name 63

Still Alone 64

Reflection 65

A Thank-You 68

4:07 A.M. 69

Prayer 70

Miles to Go Before We Sleep 71

There Is No War Inside of Me 72

Redux 73

4

Back to Life 77

Waiting 78

To the Sea 79

Autumn, And I Miss You 80

Post-Argument, September 81

Stay 82

A Poem for Morning 83

A Reason to Inhale 84

Ruin 85

Don't Forget Me 87

Belief 88

Little Things 89

An Empty Plague 91

A Constant Gardener 92

Cornwall, 7:04 a.m. 93

Older 94

That Which Does Not Kill You 96

Panic Attack Followed By Silence 97

Mausoleum 98

Personal History 99

To Drown as a Cure for Thirst

Notes 102

About the Author 103