Last June I was thrilled to be the joint winner of the Eyewear competition Melita Hume Poetry Prize with Tony Chan. I had entered it several times before and been shortlisted, which just goes to show taking your time to edit, revise and sit on your poetry is a good thing.

The collection is currently being brought into being by head honcho Todd Swift and Kelly Davio. See below for the covers of mine and Tony’s book, designed by Edwin Smet.

I never imagined so much pink but I absolutely love it! Tony’s is pretty cool as well!

The books will be launched jointly in the autumn. Watch this space.

Meantime, read what judged Toby Martinez de las Rivas had to say about Psalmody:

Maria Apichella’s beautiful, unsparing study of love and faith, Psalmody.

The collection is broadly about the writer’s developing relationship with a soldier, David, due to be posted to the Middle East, and the conflict this engenders with the poet’s deeply held, but also deeply afflicted, religious faith. As the collection develops, its central character becomes inextricably identified with the Old Testament King and Psalmist, and the poet’s response is a series of 80 free verse – though deeply rhythmical – psalms which transplant all of that form’s tropes – vivid eroticism, praise, questioning, triumph, doubt, a lush naturalism – into modern Wales. Above and beyond the technical skill on display in each poem, what I most admired in this collection was its searingly intelligent intimacy, a deeply constructed symbolism which constantly re-surfaces throughout the book and a powerful, direct, unsettling and, at times, very beautiful and stark lyric.