Mud Swallow, by Sophie Appel

Poetry, chapbook, 48 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

The “Mud Swallow” or the cliff swallow or American cliff swallow (Petrochelidon pyrrhonota) is a songbird member of the passerine bird family Hirundinidae, the swallows and martins. Mud Swallows arrive in California in February to begin building nests out of mud under freeway overpasses, bridges, cliffs, and eaves. They breed from March through September, often returning to the same nesting sites year after year, before migrating back to South America. Mud Swallow is also a collection of poems about longing, yearning, believing, praying, lamenting, retrieving, longing, abandoning, singing to and remembering love all up and down the state of California.

Sophie Appel is a poet and historical map archivist living in Los Angeles. She tends to The Beach and Five Thirty Four. She is the host of Spit in the Ocean, a monthly online reading series on Lower Grand Radio. She is the author of The World’s Largest Cherry Pie.