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.

Malkin: An Ellegy in 14 Spels

Literature & Fiction

Ralphs, Camille

Poetry

Emma Press

After You Were, I Am

An extraordinary debut from Camille Ralphs, heralding the arrival of a major new talent. In After You Were, I Am, charged moments from history collide with our own godless modern world. The book's three sections - rewritings of canonical prayers, dramatic monologues from the Pendle witch trials of 1612, and the divine tragedy of the Elizabethan magus John Dee - obsess over individual human characters, and how our past informs (and informs on) our present. This is poetry as incantation, plea and invocation. Drawing on a vast range of influences, from sacred texts and early modern drama to Metaphysical wit, twentieth-century Confessionalism and contemporary irony and mistrust, this ambitious debut embodies the variety and singularity of living voices past and present, which through rapturous music, anarchic wordplay and formal distortion are dragged to breaking point. The very history of the English language glows through the cracks. The effect is a terrestrial transcendence, as spaces within and between human thoughts expand to reveal a shared heritage of faults and answerless questions at every turn. Ralphs's style is utterly distinctive; she is a modern metaphysical, maker of poetry that in comprehending the past manages to make of it something utterly original and contemporary.

McSweeney's Publishing

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Books by Ralphs, Camille

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Ralphs, Camille. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Malkin: An Ellegy in 14 Spels

After You Were, I Am