Nine Arches Press

Folkish

Kym Deyn

Available to pre-order, this book will be dispatched close to publication date, 23/04/26

A Poetry Book Society Recommendation

ISBN: 9781916760363

eISBN: 9781916760370

 Price: £11.99

Publication date: 23^rd April 2026

Format: Paperback / eBook

Territories: World

Extent: 72pp

DCF: Poetry Collections

Cover artwork by Letty Wilson 

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

'As the title suggests, Kym Deyn’s Folkish, is good-old-fashioned-up-to-the-minute fun, spinning truthful tales both old and new with twists of feint to impress, seduce and transform.' - Kimberly Campanello

'Bold, inventive, sardonic. Ripe with scavenger gods, local saints and legends, Folkish scours the land and throws everything into its spellbag, shaking it hard: Leafy elms and hedgehog paté; kittiwakes and ugly new builds; glowflies dancing in the wood.' - Richard Skelton