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Baba Yaga illustrated by Dmitri Mitrokhin I am beginning to get feedback from readers of my new collection, Something In Nothing, and it's fascinating and a bit surprising. "Compelling" and "Couldn't put it down" are not words I would normally expect in a response to a poetry collection. Describing a novel, yes. But then Something In Nothing weaves the lives of a number of characters as their lives cross and interact to create a narrative. It is arguably a novel made of poe

Today we said goodbye to a wonderful friend, the folktale and myth scholar Neil Philip. The North Oxford Crematarium was full of people, like us, whose lives have been made richer by Neil and his wife, the artist Emma Bradford. Neil was the author of over 70 books, mostly on children's literature, mythology, folktales and fairy tales. At Neil's funeral Philip Pullman recalled the impact of Neil's book The Cinderalla Story on how Pullman viewed fairy tales. And I recall with g

Illustration by Robert Anning Bell One of my favourite folk songs, Tam Lin, has certain similarities with the story of Beauty and the Beast. In particular, there is the triggering incident for both tales – the taking of a rose from the garden belonging to Beast/Tam Lin. The difference is that in Tam Lin the thief is the female protagonist, whereas in Beauty and the Beast the thief is her father, something I have adopted for Something in Nothing. The rose as a symbol of love/s

Book illustration by John Batten Of the three main fairy tales referred to in Something In Nothing  Beauty and the Beast is the most familiar and popular. This is partly due to two films by Disney, but also because it appears in many fairy tale books. As the Wikipedia entry for the tale shows there are and were dozens of variations on the Beauty and the Beast story across many countries and indeed continents. In classical literature there is the story of Cupid and Psyche for