When I first began my research into the Pendle witches in 1984 it proved exceedingly difficult to unearth any serious literature on the subject. Like many Lancastrians I first heard of the witches through the oral tradition of local myths and legends which had been passed down through the centuries but trying to discover the reality behind the folklore was, at the time, a struggle. The handful of local guide books available tended to cloak uncomfortable reality with cartoon images of haggish women with pointy hats, pointy noses and broomsticks; the template witch so beloved by children. Harsh facts were tagged on or sketchily embedded in the jokey safety of harum-scarum fantasy and consumer-friendly witchery.The complex reality of these unlucky hill people caught up in their time, belief systems, religious persecution and the ambitions of petty officials is infinitely more disturbing and compelling than the clichéd merchandise of the Halloween circus served up by today's supermarkets or the trite albeit entertaining motifs of Hammer Horror films. It became increasingly obvious that the truth behind this sad and messy episode from our past was an inconvenience few wanted to deal with.Collusion and reinforcement of the oblique misogyny and class snobbery that ran through many of these narratives suggested that the octogenarian matriarchs Anne Whittle (Chattox) and Elizabeth Southern (Demdike) were indisputably witches because they were elderly peasant women whereas the gentlewoman Alice Nutter was almost always excused and explained away as being a Roman Catholic. This type of ill-considered value judgment was meted out and made more depressing by an unquestioning reiteration of such notions.When I finally tracked down a dog-eared transcript of Thomas Potts' account of the witch trials in my local reference library (so rare at the time I was not allowed to borrow it) it was a revelation to read an eyewitness account. A real version of reality rather than a version of fantasy. So piece by piece, year by year I gathered as much information as I could for my series of poems on the Pendle witches and in 1994 it was published by Creation Books under the title Interregnum.The original version of Interregnum contained one section based on autobiographical material and one concerned with people who had special connections to Pendle such as the founder of the Quaker movement George Fox, who had his vision on Pendle Hill and was also incarcerated in Lancaster Castle, and the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins who taught at Stonyhurst college in the shadow of Pendle. There was also a scattering of contemporary references and quotes from, for example, the Birmingham Six (tried at Lancaster Castle) and the wrongfully imprisoned Stefan Kiszko.For this 400th commemorative edition I am reproducing the two sets of monologues, retaining the original idea of having one monologue under the popular folklore name, e.g. Squintin Lizzie, and the second under the birth name, e.g. Elizabeth Device. I have however altered the presentation so that the monologues are in pairs rather than in two different sections as in the original. I have also included three additional 'Chantcasters' monologues. It is worth noting that all the words in these three poems, bar three lines, are reworkings of poems which Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote whilst he was in residence at Stonyhurst College. I was spurred on to do this reworking by one of the guide book authors who had reproduced the rather fine three lined 'witches spell' and dismissed it as 'gobbledegook'. There was no recognition that the caprice of circumstance which can make the difference between being condemned to die as a witch or being celebrated as Jesuit poet-priest could be one of time, gender and class.

Pendle Witch Words

Literature & Fiction

Monk, Geraldine

Poetry

Knives Forks and Spoons

These poems sparkle with life, with the life of the everyday, fleeting moments of work, play and imagining. All the little oddments of language that end up in the glovebox. This is language coursing through the city, sidewalks and cafés and theatres and pubs, through noisy crowds and intimate tête-à-tête's and quiet soliloquies, language suffused with sensory detail and subtle inflection. This is the real thing. - Bill Lavender I was in a cab once and needed a map, so I went to open the glovebox, when the cabbie's arm shot out and slammed it shut! Colin Herd's 'glovebox' is kind of the opposite of that: reading these poems feels like unravelling an array of impossible silks from some unassuming compartment ... the unexpected and deeply pleasing surfaces of these poems are both rough and smooth, awkward and tender, weightless and bright, and never blatant, never chintzy: although 'the cloth will not obediently spread', and is unpredictable and bunchy, it's also 'finer than a frog hair split four ways', feels great on the eyes and hangs just right, in this winning and throwaway style that seemingly just came together without the help of a mirror - but these are throwaway lines you have to snap up and keep. There are designs here made of a special kind of attention and shading. Just looking at them makes me feel bashful and delighted. I do actually wish there was some way I could *wear* Colin Herd's poems. - Sam Riviere

Glovebox and Other Poems

Herd, Colin

Selections from the Life & Death of Peter Stubbe

Glass, Jesse

Lack Dream

BURTON, Robert

Certain Manoeuvres

Unsworth, Lydia

Housework

Birchenough, Susan

This is a sequence of what I retrospectively regard as 'countersonnets', and they are composed from overheard and gathered material. They derive their shape from the floorplan of the Hergest Unit in Bangor, Gwynedd. The Hergest Unit consists of 3 octagonal buildings that are named after the poets Taliesin, Cynan and Aneurin. A number of my friends have been temporarily housed at this department of Ysbyty Gwynedd Hospital over the years. The Red Book of Hergest, which provides much of the material for this book, is a Middle Welsh text scribed by Hywel Fychan and others in the fourteenth century. It contains seminal Welsh works of literature, including 'The Mabinogion' and the poetry of 'Y Cynfeirdd' and 'Y Gogynferidd'.

The Red Book of Hergest Ward

Trimble, Rhys

In the Gemini Café

CAMPBELL, Neil

Thirty Clouds

Szirtes, George

Arts & Photography

"Ruth Stacey's How to Wear Grunge eschews nostalgia and the self-fulfilling mythology of rock's nearly-famous excesses for a fierce, feminist holler back into the feedback of another place and time, in all its bleached and sticky-carpeted illusions and almost-glory. Between truth or dare narratives that toy with the tension of hard facts - "Too gloomy, tell me about the prettiness again. / No. Tell me the worst thing" - these poems are wild and wise, and faultlessly written. There is a beating rock' n' roll heart of riot-grrl rebellion in every line. Stacey is a fearless and utterly compelling writer, whose candid, courageous poetry takes on the prevailing narrative and places women at the very epicentre." - Jane Commane "In How to Wear Grunge, Ruth Stacey has achieved a bittersweet examination of brutal youth and violent love, with expert attention to the timing of acceptance, obsession and revelation. There's almost a contact-high to these poems, an intoxication that has been carefully crafted to provide relief from the horrors of the past and of each other, creating a deceptively fragile romance of a sub-culture that encouraged the dirt and distortion of the fragmented self. However, once we have questioned the lives of the damaged, haunted souls in this cool as hell collection, what burns through is strength and survival, wounds that gush with the language of dark joy, the sweet stink of dope and incense, a promise (to past, present and future selves) tightly rolled into a joint so full of flavour it will leave your mouth watering. How to Wear Grunge is ultimately a kaleidoscopic questionnaire. There are no right or wrong answers. In the end, we all dance to something. We make noise, we hurt each other and, sometimes, we forgive." - Bobby Parker

How to Wear Grunge

Stacey, Ruth

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