Adam Thorpe

We know you’ve got a thing about us, scuffing the earth at our feet, giving us a voice. Like this.

We know about the groans we’ve heard, the yelps in moonlight, rumours of progeny. Bellies keep pressing us; we decline.

Thunder on the moor and your effeteness assured, we think of us as crown whetted on the storm, not bald queans.

We know about the influx of coach parties; the way...

For every booming bittern there are ten, for every cliff-stacked gannet mass

there is at least one with his clingfilmed lunch-pack, wringing his socks on St Kilda.

This is surety of sorts. That the index finger will go on twitching till the loch

gives up its greylag, the moor its merlin, that even the chough has its hangers-on

grim-jawed on outcrops where the breakers’ sting assures Him...

A modern witch is a Witch. The upper case denotes a self-consciousness born of safer times: Witchcraft is now a minority faith to be taken seriously (at least in the States), and there is even a Witches’ League for Public Awareness. They need it. For the broomsticks, black cats, green-hued hags with pointy hats – all the paraphernalia people remember from childhood – have...