Folkish by Kym Deyn
Poetry Book Society Recommendation Summer 2026
Nine Arches Press
Published 23 April 2026
Folkish is a trickster figure masquerading as a poetry collection. Full of ghosts, worms, saints, and Northern English folklore, Kym Deyn’s debut is playful, spirited and absolutely furious – moving between the alive, the legendary, and the haunted in endlessly inventive forms.
Between deep time and mischief, Deyn’s poetry hungers and sharpens its spells – casting curses on bad landlords, exhaustion and poverty. These poems know intimately the coexistence of darkness and light, the mirror’s slippery surface, and all that moves like magic in the depths of forest and root, containing multitudes – “a million sipping leaf-mouths, now quiet and peaty”. Here, poetry is an act of wild transformation – boundless and entirely distinctive, unafraid of reconfiguration and re-enchantment.
Praise for Folkish:
'Queer and disconcerting, Kym Deyn’s debut is chock-full with poems which tear at both the heart and the guts. They inhabit a world where dark eyes scour graveyards for breakfast and saints are as likely to spit as to pray. This is poetry as hauntology, where England’s North is alive with untrustworthy and beguiling pasts, presents, and futures. Folkish is a glorious exhibition of witchy play and wit, where the Devil prowls and Deyn never fails to answer back.' - Rachel Mann
Cover artwork by Letty Wilson
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