In the Realm of Motes

Author: Baptiste Gaillard

Translator: Aditi Machado

Publisher: Roof Books (2025)

A stunning work of prose poetry from award-winning Swiss poet Baptiste Gaillard, In the Realm of Motes is a key ecopoetic text that celebrates the infinitesimal and the ephemeral in their entropic yet orchestral movements of aggregration, fragmentation, and mutation. Both Gaillard’ s language and what these prose poems point to break apart, absorb, and reconstitute a unique space that is both easily comprehended and entirely strange. At one moment we’ re reading about a lake or a forest and the next our deepest meditations and alarms. These short prose poems must be read to understand the lower layer connecting us and our surroundings.