top of page
< Back

Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi, Lesley Curwen, JLM Morton, Catherine Balaq


SIGNS, TETSUHIRO WAKABAYASHI
SIGNS, TETSUHIRO WAKABAYASHI


THE CATTEWATER SPRITE SPEAKS

Lesley Curwen 


In every dawn I taste the river’s aged breath 

      warmed by a thousand years of long sweet rays,

smash salt in dieselled air, burst like brother dolphin

       in morning’s face. No eyes to see my gurgling halo

or blaze of dorsal scale. With the honk of pilot boat’s 

       first call, I subside in debris at pontoon’s edge, hide 

for the day’s tidal sweep of tanker and sail, 

       the drone of rubber boat. I grieve for what was, 

for Catte’s clean spread, oyster and bream, 

       cool green of home. No-one knows me. Once 

I showed my horns to a wherryful of drunks 

      who called me a bloody mermaid. I shoved a hole 

in their thwart and did them in. There is no respect  

      for the elder race, for water’s soul.




INCANTATION

JLM Morton


For Ellen Hayward, last person to be tried for witchcraft in Gloucestershire (1906) 


Midwinter. The oaks are blurred with fog and the world 

stands still on Ships Yud Row. 


Old Ellen. 


Cunning folk. Witch. Hag. Crone. Harpy. 

The language of all she let go.


There is no word for a woman who’s lost a child, 

palms stained and scored with foraging. 


Plants hang from the rafters. 


Bitter must of feverfew for the ligaments of a forester with nothing but a split sack tied as a coat. 

Green nettle for the mind that can’t scrape up the rent. 

Sweet calendula, each petal a painless hour for each girl who scours the stones. 

And nothing asked in return. 


Let not the moment turn to the trial of Ellen Hayward. 

Let her not be condemned to the kitsch renditions of a pantomime, 

her image cut and stuck to postcard scenes. 

Save her from the repellents of cold iron, hazel sticks, salt circles and the cockerel’s crow. 

The threat of hands hacked off for healing.

Let her not be an anecdote on a tour guide’s lips.

But let her be 


orchids 

sweet chestnut

grizzled skipper 

wild sow 

spleenwort. 


Moonlight. 


Let her own heart be saved.

Let the moment not come when 

she gives her thirdborn up 

to the broth and starch of a workhouse. 


Let her rest, let her feast on meats and salad, plum juice dripping from the hook 

of her chin as she sails the Severn sprawled on the sweet dream 

of a swan’s back. 


Let the cooling limestone soothe, 

the forest mulch and coal.

Let go her seed of grief. 





SONNET XL

for Persephone

Catherine Balaq


in growing darkness i expand/ignite embers

earn my witchness/my wickedness/part

damp earth between found legs/cast a honeyed

split with woven guile/you’ve looked/lacked/the ache

is mute/the hush has licked me open/black/

our fated minds attract this trick/pull at threads/plot

hungry to unravel/dying to be dead for you/suck

this little ploy that worms through/hands

crave to jolt the middle wound/your voweled

voice spells this sin/flesh made rash/burns mad/

chokes/holds me by the throat/pulls from my body

quick/the foul ghost invoked/every cry tight as a kiss/

cradle my very name over flames/spit wet fevers/

sniff now my dusk/slide stiff over me/surge night/cunny

blacksmith of my remaking/change me/shape me real


Tetsuhiro Wakabayashi

After graduating from Kanazawa College of Art, I worked in package design and video production.

In 2014, I started my creative work in the rich natural environment of Kanazawa.

I am drawing on the poetic sentiment within myself.


Lesley Curwen is a poet, broadcaster and sailor who lives in Plymouth, UK. She often writes about loss and rescue. She won the Molecules Unlimited Poetry Prize and was a finalist in the Wales Poetry Award. Her pamphlet Rescue Lines is published by Hedgehog Press and an eco-chapbook, Sticky with Miles is published by Dreich Press. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Other work has been published by Bad Lilies, Broken Sleep, Atrium, After Poetry, Black Bough, The Alchemy Spoon, East Ridge Review and Ice Floe Press.


JLM Morton is from Gloucestershire in the west of England. Her work has appeared in Poetry Review, Rialto, Magma, Mslexia, The London Magazine, Berlin Lit, Anthropocene, Bad Lilies, Modron and elsewhere. Highly commended by the Forward Prizes, she is the winner of the Laurie Lee and Geoffrey Dearmer prizes. Her first poetry collection is Red Handed, out now with Broken Sleep Books (2024).


Catherine Balaq is a writer and body psychotherapist. Her work has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and nominated for the Pushcart and Forward Prize. Her poetry play 'Fuck the Moon' was commissioned by Paper Nations and short-listed for the Bristol Old Vic Open Sessions 2019. Catherine is working on her first novel, 'Halloweg' and is represented by Donald Winchester at Watson Little. She is co-editor of Black Cat Press. Catherine’s writing centres around themes of class, gender and the politics of the body. Her debut poetry collection 'animaginary' was published with Black Cat Press. Her second poetry collection 'Deathless' is published with Verve.

bottom of page