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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

In the forest near my former Czech home In an earlier post I introduced you to, Baba Yaga, the Slavic witch and hinted that there was more to her than just being a witch. In the fairy tale Vasilisa The Fair  the heroine sees three horsemen ride past, one dressed in white, one in red, one in black. When she asks Baba Yaga the identity of the coloured riders, Baba Yaga explains that they are Baba Yaga’s servants: Bright Day, Red Sun and Black Midnight. These are not the servant

Johnny Greenteeth has produced this video of the opening poem in my collection.

I was having coffee with a friend of mine this morning and she said “You don’t make it easy for yourself, Zoe. Every collection is so different structurally.” First there was Owl Unbound , a conventional poetry collection of distinct poems, then there was Fool’s Paradise a poem for multiple voices or verse play, and now there is Something In Nothing . Something In Nothing weaves together the narratives of a number of fairytale characters to form a story. These narratives ar

My latest poetry collection, Something In Nothing , is officially published. You can now buy Something In Nothing from Waterstones and Amazon and maybe other outlets I don't know about. Up to now you could only buy it from me and from my publisher Indigo Dreams Publishing. Of course you can still can and I would prefer it if you did. Here are the links: My online shop: https://zoebrookspoetry.bigcartel.com/product/something-in-nothing You get the option for a signed copy

Baba Yaga illustated by Ivan Bilibin At a reading a few days ago I was asked to introduce Baba Yaga more. Being Slavic in origin, Baba Yaga is not familiar to most people in Western Europe, but in Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, she is well known. Unlike the other characters in Something In Nothing, who tend to be associated with a particular story, Baba Yaga appears in hundreds of Slavic fairy tales. This means there are often inconsistences in

Illustration by Beauge Bertall The story of Bluebeard is possibly the best example of how fairy tales are not really for children. Although I read the story as a child in Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book , which despite being in a book published for children is surprisingly full of blood,  somehow I managed not to be too traumatised by this story of a serial killer of women, but I can’t say it was a favourite of mine. It was only as I grew older that this dark tale began to inte

This Friday I will be reading at Diversion @ Ledbury Poetry alongside Jack Pascoe . Thanks Emma and Adrian for inviting me to read at the Poetry House. It will be the first outing of my new collection Something In Nothing . Hope to see you there.

I love reading to an audience, whether in person or online. And Something in Nothing works really well as a performance, indeed it was written with the sound in mind. In my previous post, you can hear a podcast of a reading I gave at Milton Keynes Lit Fest. Here is what Dave Wakely (online programme manager for the Lit Fest) had to say about my performance: Zoe's poems take us into the realms of myth and magic, shining a torch into the dark corners that reveal that fairy ta

Last year Anna Saunders and I were delighted and honoured to be invited by Dave Wakely to headline an online event organised by Milton Keynes Literature Festival (MK Lit Fest). We were joined by Julia Webb, Leo Boix and Lesley Sharpe That event is now available as a MK Lit Fest's podcast (see below). My reading begins 32.10 mins in.

As I said previously the study of fairy tales is the work of a lifetime and not one I have undertaken. But here is a short bibliography of the books sitting on my shelves that I hope you will find interesting if you want to read further. 1                         Tellings of Fairytales Penguin Classics include the following: The Brothers Grimm (trans Jack Zipes) – The Complete Fairy Tales Franz Xaver von Schonwerth (trans Maria Tatar) - The Turnip Princess and Other Newly Dis

This collection has been many years in the writing. This is partly due to the sensitivity of its inspiration. When I was about 11 years old, I joined a poetry group at the Children’s Arts Centre, Cheltenham. A leading light of the group was a young poet, about 7 years older than me, called Lucy Partington. In 1973 Lucy disappeared on her way home. We talked about her a lot over the years that followed. When I was 15, I went on holiday to Greece and shared a room with Lucy’s m

Red Riding Hood Meets the Wolf - Illustration by Walter Crane Whether it is state terror or the individual evil of a misogynist serial killer, most of us are in denial. It couldn’t happen to us. The man we pass on the street cannot be a murderer.  Our country would never slip into tyranny. Worse still, we see the danger in the wrong places, fearing those who are different (the stranger), rather than people who seem to be like us. And if we do see evil, how can we speak of it?

Vasilisa at the hut of Baba Yaga by Ivan Bilibin My new poetry collection Something In Nothing includes this endpiece: Something In Nothing uses fairy tales as a means of talking about dark matters in a safe way. This is after all what fairytales have always done – stories about not taking sweets (or gingerbread) from strangers, about child neglect and worse. I grew up on fairy tales, having worked my way through all Andrew Lang’s Fairy Books  in my local library and watched

Anna Saunders and I will be reading at Riff Corner in Clevedon on Monday. Details in photo.

Anna Saunders and I both spend a lot of time giving opportunities for poets to read their work, whether online or at the in-Cheltenham...