Malkin

Author: Camille Ralphs

Illustrator: Emma Wright

Publisher: The Emma Press (2017)

Camille Ralphs’ Malkin is a vivid collection of poems about the Pendle Witch Trials of 1612. Illustrated with woodcut-style drawings by Emma Wright. 

"A boy gnew me by a stonepit. He steemed

in th sun stone-kneading, lighting trees like wicks;

his eyes were sofd as ash, and cities hymned

and chymneyed in the atlas of his sex.

 

I tricked in him, – unclocked all tocks, all ticks;

a debt that ploppd its anchor in my tchest –

nd 8 weeks fraille in rocking lihgt, I foamed

at the mouth like the sea.He ssuppd the moyst

 

unplundered of my underarm; he yessed,

impressed on me the braille of wouldlice

havocking the rocks.

 

I kept him at a cost:

he got with dogg my daughter, bent our howse

toward a future wigged with cirrus,

fingernail’d with hangman’s lime. I died in prison."