After a Short Illness: A Meditation on Aphasia

By John Whitehouse

After a Short Illness is John Whitehouse's meditation on aphasia, written from the aftermath of a stroke that almost severed his speech. The poems work in short, image-dense stanzas that measure the distance between talk and utterance, moving between hospital wards, a brother's death, and the task of giving names to animals. Whitehouse finds company among others estranged from language, Zazetsky writing his way back from a head wound and Baudelaire silenced in an asylum, and what accumulates is less lament than an account of language repossessed word by word.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1918628157
• ISBN13: 9781918628159
• Release Date: September 2026
• Publisher: Broken Sleep Books
• Length: 34 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.1" x 5.0" x 8.0"