Come and celebrate the launch of Folkish, Kym Deyn’s debut poetry collection and Poetry Book Society Recommendation. With additional readings by Timothy Fox and Prerana Kumar.
Folkish is a trickster figure masquerading as a poetry collection.
Full of ghosts, worms, saints, and folklore, Folkish is playful, spirited and absolutely furious – moving between the alive, the legendary and the haunted in endlessly inventive forms.
'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
The Author
Kym Deyn is a poet and writer of weird fiction who moonlights variously as a tarot reader, a librarian, and the editor of The Braag CIC, a publisher based in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. Their pamphlets include Dionysia and Unfurl. They have been widely published in anthologies and journals for their poetry and prose, including Butcher’s Dog, 14 Poems and Strange Horizons. They’ve been shortlisted for awards including The Bridport Prize and recently came third in the 2025 Oxford Poetry Prize. Folkish is their debut collection.
The Guests
Timothy Fox is a writer. His debut chapbook ‘every house needs a ghost’ is available from The Braag. It was a finalist for the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. He received a Houston Press Theatre Award for his play ‘The Whale; or, Moby-Dick’ and a Vault Festival Spirit Award for his play ‘The Witch’s Mark’. His writing has appeared in, among others, The Ghastling, The Molotov Cocktail, ergot., Gordon Square Review, Passengers Journal, Gasher Press, Funicular Magazine and New Writing Scotland .He has been named a London Library Emerging Writer and a Genesis Emerging Writer.
Prerana Kumar (they/them) is a writer based in London. They hold an MA in Creative Writing from UEA and were shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize 2022 and are a winner of the Rebecca Swift Foundation’s Poet’s Prize 2022. Their pamphlet ‘Ixora’ is published by Guillemot Press. They are currently reading for a LAHP-funded doctorate in Creative Writing at QMUL.