Malkin

Camille Ralphs, Emma Dai'an Wright

• Publisher: The Emma Press
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781910139325
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

Malkin is a vivid evocation of the trials of the Pendle Witches in 1612. The sequence of poems is delivered in the form of epitaphic monologues, with the accused men and women eerily addressing the reader with their confessions and pleas. Strikingly, Camille Ralphs has employed unorthodox spelling throughout the monologues, bringing out new meanings in familiar words and encouraging the reader to immerse themselves in the world of the poems. Fully illustrated with woodcut-style drawings from Emma Wright.

[illustration 1]

Pendle Hill

Now where is Demdike, old as toothache, she who set two families to shelling stars like peas, who firmly pelled the mell?

Helle

And whose now is Elizabeth, her cross-eye set high-low, unsoundable, – who onetime bricked a cat into the wall, who frothed its bones to mortar for the hours?

Ours

And which of these is Alizon – the catalyst – who cursed John Law but was blindsided when the lameness flattened him, flung down a flyswat sky?

I

And what remains of James – the son, the bumbler scarved in pigswill – overleaping sickly faith to come aground?

Grownd

And what became the voice of Chattox, hers the ticking, clapping teeth and lips, who lived by burgling the Device dearth & wringing them of grain?

Rain

And why the fall of Anne, the witch of images and sculptor of the earth’s slick flesh – who was at once my Pendle’s admiration and its terror?

Errorr

And what snapped loose when Alice – Catholic more than witch and highly-housed – was snatched from apse of splitting sun, refused to lapse to alibi & harm her friends?

Ends

And how well sing still Jane and John, took both for spelling mad one Jennet Deane; who, both on book as innocent, were dropped to dirt, to mouthfuls of black cob and furling cloudswell?

Well

And how might we hear Mould-heels, – stood accused of evil evil, housing thoughts as cold as empty beds – unscribbling the colic-common wind with baby’s-cry?

Skry

And how in death lies Isabel, who followed up the scarp of sun and dubbed herself a witch (so the tongues of her wishes exalted and yodelled in air, then were stumped)?

Humpd

And where is Margaret, she who jinxed a horse as it
collapsed, its legs a concertina; who lived, but to be dusted with bruises from dashed fruit and locked up for a year?

Here

And what the fate of Jennet, botch of Device batch & birthed by Malkin Tower; – built on omens, roof thatched with amens – who turned them inside-out, with all the rest?

Arest

These, in fog – subsumed – in earth as blood-filled stones (chilling that unsweet syrup), dancing to their own red music. Me, green as a symphony, steepling off into tomorrow’s air. You, fishing in the dingle, in the rising of the waters, for a prize of pillow-talk or humble pie, for the vast mirage of the future – of voices hollow, small as flutes of grass.

Listen.

[illustration 2]

Elizabeth Sowtherns

(alias Demdike)

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 pl...

Table of contents

• *
• * * *Malkin
• Epigraph
• Historical note
• Contents
• [illustration 1]
• Pendle Hill
• [illustration 2]
• Elizabeth Sowtherns
• Elizabeth Device
• Alizon Device
• [illustration 3]
• James Device
• Anne Whittle
• Anne Redferne
• Alice Nutter
• Jane Bulcock
• John Bulcock
• Katherine Hewit
• [illustration 4]
• Isabel Robey
• Margaret Pearson
• Jennet Device
• [illustration 5]
• Note on free spelling
• Acknowledgements
• About the authors
• Endnotes
• The Emma Press
• Also from the Emma Press