Kieron Smith, boy

Folkish is a trickster figure masquerading as a poetry collection. Full of ghosts, worms, saints, and Northern English folklore, Kym Deyn’s debut is playful, spirited and absolutely furious – moving between the alive, the legendary, and the haunted in endlessly inventive forms. Between deep time and mischief, Deyn’s poetry hungers and sharpens its spells – casting curses on bad landlords, exhaustion and poverty. These poems know intimately the coexistence of darkness and light, the mirror’s slippery surface, and all that moves like magic in the depths of forest and root, containing multitudes – “a million sipping leaf-mouths, now quiet and peaty”. Here, poetry is an act of wild transformation – boundless and entirely distinctive, unafraid of reconfiguration and re-enchantment.