Books
After You Were, I Am (UK: Faber, 2024; US: McSweeney's, 2025).
Audio extract recorded for Faber and Faber, 2024.
Audio extract recorded at Fergie's Pub, Philadelphia, 2025.
Praise for After You Were, I Am:
*Longlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award 2025*
*A book of the year in Artforum, 2025*
*A book of the year in The Telegraph and The Guardian, 2024*
“After You Were, I Am was at least a decade in the making, and the strength of the poetry is a measure of the crisis it confronts. […] First the stylish translations and imitations of canonical prayers, with their inflections of humour and modern living; next the closet drama of the Pendle Witch Trials, with Ralphs’s empathetic ventriloquism of these isolated, beleaguered souls in agony; and finally the fully imagined monologues of [John] Dee, a figure who is neither victim nor moral exemplar. […] Ralphs’s talent for subsuming her ego in her subjects […] gives her a gravitas few think to look for anymore.”
—Ange Mlinko, London Review of Books
“Ralphs’s mischievous, metaphysical debut riffs on great religious poets, revisits the victims of the Pendle Witch Trials and explores the life of Elizabethan conjuror John Dee.”
—Tristram Fane Saunders, “Top 50 Books of 2024,” The Telegraph
“Camille Ralphs’s After You Were, I Am brings a medieval spirituality vibrantly into the modern world.”
—Rishi Dastidar, “The Best Poetry Books of 2024,” The Guardian
'Ralphs’s poems are inquisitive, witty, and deadly serious. [...] I wish for more of this kind of experimentation, which understands and rearranges current structures rather than adding something ontologically new. Because what is hiding in plain sight might be apposite for understanding our time."
—Mi You, "Best of 2025: Books," Artforum
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“It’s a rare debut collection today that dares to be difficult, to be theologically complex, to be theological at all. Yet After You Were, I Am showcases an ambition, seriousness and wit that make it strangely timeless. […] beautiful […] irreverent […] terrifying […] impeccably researched […] jaw-dropping. It’s impossible to do it justice in less than a dissertation, but […] I expect to be re-reading it for years to come.”
“A contemporary approach to metaphysical poetry that is serious without being lofty. […] It is rare to come across a book of poems in which a forensic approach to phrasemaking sits on the same seesaw as an ambitious exploration of history and religious belief.”
—Matthew Welton, Times Literary Supplement
“From the outset of After You Were, I Am, the reader embarks on an astonishing adventure […] There is an eerie, quivering, steampunk depth to Ralphs’ poetry. The writing grounds itself in a type of earthy empathy for ‘the workers of this world,’ as well as historical figures, but effortlessly straddles the spiritual and fantastic, too.”
—Jennifer Lee-Tsai, The Guardian
“That Ralphs forms and reforms such disparate voices […] is an indication of her dexterity of voice, scholarship and capacity for holding attention. […] Novel, in many senses of the word: the characters and their worlds, violences, desires and delusions draw one in; novel too, in the best tradition of newness—connected viscerally, sometimes viciously, to what’s gone before.”
—Padraig O’Tuauma, The Poetry Review
“When you read a poem by Camille Ralphs, you encounter an artistic sensibility that isn’t present in the work of most contemporary poets[. …] History is the playing field of her poetry; the soccer ball is language.”
—Ryan Asmussen, Chicago Review of Books
“Ralphs’ first full-length collection is dense and strange, but definitely superb […] Ralphs has a whole crackling lightning nervous system charging throughout, which brings the gods (often God) down from somewhere above with electric clarity—and clarity is what Ralphs’ tricky, tricksy poems are never without.”
—Austin Spendlowe, Oxford Review of Books
“The collection is, in a sense […] a miniature library, brought alive by Ralphs’ electric ability to inhabit its periods and personalities. This is a collection that steps bravely into the Holy row that has been blazing for centuries—and makes thrilling poetry out of the racket.”
—Andrew McCulloch, The Manchester Review
"Hold onto your hats as U.K. poet Camille Ralphs speaks back with wit and devotion to a who’s who of mystics, theologians, philosophers—Rumi, Herbert, Donne, Mechthild of Magdeburg [...]."
“Both touching and wittily current […] the language as delicious as the narrative is compelling.”
“Camille Ralphs’ disconcertingly accomplished debut […] finds words of fire for our exhausted secular age. […] I could write a thousand words about Ralphs’ collection and barely have begun.”
“Disapproving despair is offset by lines of radical beauty […] Blakean in their fidelity to British numinous experience […] setting the scene for the unnervingly brilliant presence of the hapless Dee in the final sequence. […] Its electrifying legacy will not, one hopes, pay the price of calling up and sounding out the magus.”
“It’s exquisitely wrought and breathtakingly beautiful but, like George Herbert’s The Temple, there are no cheap sideshow stunts here. Form and function reanimate the dead and in their fragility and mortality we see ourselves.”
“This book has earned its plaudits: Ralphs is a highly original poet, a technically brilliant prosodist given to flights of dextrous wordplay, with a disorientating gonzo theological focus that renders her nothing short of a ‘modern metaphysical.’”
“Ambitious and effervescent […] I think my favourite book of the year.”
—John Clegg, London Review Bookshop’s Books of the Year
Audiobook
After You Were, I Am (Faber, 2024)
Pamphlets
Common Prayers (limited-edition art book with Shoshana Kessler and Lulu Bennett, 2024).
Daydream College for Bards (Guillemot Press, 2023).
uplifts & chains (If A Leaf Falls Press, 2020).
Malkin: An ellegy in 14 spels (The Emma Press, 2015).
Selected individual poems
"after George Herbert" in the New York Review of Books.
"after Mechthild of Magdeburg" in the New York Review of Books.
"Veni Sancte Spiritus" in The Spectator.
"after John Baillie" in Subtropics.
"after John Donne" in Bath Magg​.
"On May Day (Massachusetts, 1627)" in Bad Lilies.
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Selected reviews and essays
On Proto-Indo-European in The Tablet.
On four poetry collections in The Tablet.
On editing in Poets & Writers.
On Yehuda Amichai in The Tablet.
On Taylor Swift’s Tortured Poets Department in The Telegraph.
On Decadent women writers in The TLS.
On Lord Byron in The Telegraph.
On etymology and contemporary poetry in the LA Review of Books.
On English poetry anthologies in The TLS.
On Don Paterson in The Telegraph.
Columns
“Averse Miscellany” for Poetry London, 2021–4.
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Selected interviews with other poets
Interviewing A. E. Stallings in PBLJ.
Interviewing Christopher Reid and Fred D’Aguiar in PBLJ.
Interviewing Daljit Nagra and Karen Solie in PBLJ.
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Selected radio
BBC Radio 4, “Beyond Belief: Poetry – Reaching for Divine Heights”, recorded live at the Bradford Literature Festival, 2024.
BBC Radio 4, “Larkin Revisited – Aubade”, 2022.
BBC Radio 6 Music, Cerys Matthews Show, 2016.
Selected podcasts
TLS Podcast, “In Transit”, 2025.
London Review Bookshop podcast, “Oluwaseun Olayiwola & Camille Ralphs: Strange Beach”, recorded live at the London Review Bookshop, 2025.
Words that Burn, "Interview with Camille Ralphs", 2024.
Faber Poetry Podcast, “Camille Ralphs and Stephanie Sy-Quia”, 2023.
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Selected video
“Job 42:10–17”, highly commended for the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem (Performed), 2025.
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I regularly appear in "Poem of the Month" recordings for The TLS's socials.
I am currently working on a spoken word album, which should be released in 2026.
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Misc publicity
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Faber & Faber x Duncan Montgomery, billboard featuring Ted Hughes and Camille Ralphs.
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Faber & Faber x Beak Brewery, pale ale featuring five Camille Ralphs poems and introduction.
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Selected interviews
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Interviewed by Ryan Asmussen for the Chicago Review of Books.
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Interviewed by Elliot Ruff for Guillemot Press.
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Interviewed by Austin Spendlowe for the Oxford Review of Books.
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Interviewed by Shoshana Kessler for The London Magazine.
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Reviews of After You Were, I Am, with quotations and links, are available in the "Books" section above. Interviews on radio and podcasts are available under "Selected radio" and "Selected podcasts".
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