Hello, dear listener. Today we celebrate the release of the ace Folk-Horror Revival book, Corpse Roads. Firstly because it’s an amazing 500 plus pages of poetic and photographic goodness; secondly because we’re interested in corpse roads, and thirdly, because it’s what we do. We even have some of the poetry from within to share with you.
The Revival’s first book, Field Studies, was one of those great dip-into books with everything you needed to know about Folk-Horror – its roots, ancient lore and its use in media and contemporary works. This new book focuses on poetry, with numerous photographic illustrations to intensify the feel. We don’t want to spoil it, so what we’ve done, with the publisher’s permission, is to show you some shots of the book to give you the overall feel, and reprinted eight poems from within, classic and contemporary, which hint at why you might want to get your own copy.
The term ‘corpse road’ always triggers two vaguely connected thoughts for us. One is the Lyke Wake Dirge, which we’ll mention more in a later post (we grew up by the North York Moors).
The other is the film adaptation of one of Clive Barker’s short stories, Book of Blood (2009). The latter is because of a particularly evocative refrain used in the film:
‘The dead have highways. Highways that lead to intersections, and intersections that spill into our world. And if you find yourself at one of those intersections, you should stop and you should listen, because the dead have stories to tell.’
There are many such stories, in verse form, in the tome in question, so here we go. ALL IMAGES ARE CLICKABLE FOR MUCH LARGER VERSIONS. Please note that 100% of sales profits from this book are charitably donated to The Wildlife Trusts.
CORPSE ROADS
From the introduction:
‘Long before our first book, Folk Horror Revival: Field Studies, was
completed, the eyes of our minds were looking further down the path, gazing into the gathering mist, trying to define shapes from the shadows, wondering, ever wondering at further possible tomes to come.
‘There were many other lonely paths, wooded avenues and wind-beaten causeways to explore. There were songs to be sung, stories to be told, flickering images to be seen, and our intention holds fast that in the time that will come all too fast, we will mark mention of these in ink upon paper.
‘In traversing the borderlands between this and other worlds, other murmurs fell upon our senses, of that liminal terrain that lies between tracks and tales, between stories and song ~ the world of poetry.
‘So in order to collect the lyrical words of the dead, down Corpse Roads we trod, taking note of the territory we passed through, for it is the landscape that fed the inspiration of these past word-smiths.’
The book is divided between sections such as Poetry of the Dead, Poetry of War and Poetry of the Living, with separate chapters being given to particular poets who have contributed.
Ancestors
Amerind around the eyes
Cheekbones which speak to the past,
When I was wild.
My soul still knows
In my heart beats an animal;
A feral beast
And an eagle flying free.
© Erin Sorrey
Speak of the North: A Lonely Moor
Speak of the North!
A lonely moor
Silent and dark and tractless swells,
The waves of some wild streamlet pour
Hurriedly through its ferny dells.
Profoundly still the twilight air,
Lifeless the landscape; so we deem
Till like a phantom gliding near
A stag bends down to drink the stream.
And far away a mountain zone,
A cold, white waste of snow-drifts lies,
And one star, large and soft and lone,
Silently lights the unclouded skies.
by Charlotte Brontë
The Garden
There’s an ancient, ancient garden that I see sometimes in dreams,
Where the very Maytime sunlight plays and glows with spectral gleams;
Where the gaudy-tinted blossoms seem to wither into grey,
And the crumbling walls and pillars waken thoughts of yesterday.
There are vines in nooks and crannies, and there’s moss about the pool,
And the tangled weedy thicket chokes the arbour dark and cool:
In the silent sunken pathways springs a herbage sparse and spare,
Where the musty scent of dead things dulls the fragrance of the air.
There is not a living creature in the lonely space arouna,
And the hedge-encompass’d quiet never echoes to a sound.
As I walk, and wait, and listen, I will often seek to find
When it was I knew that garden in an age long left behind;
I will oft conjure a vision of a day that is no more,
As I gaze upon the grey, grey scenes I feel I knew before.
Then a sadness settles o’er me, and a tremor seems to start –
For I know the flow’rs are shrivell’d hopes – the garden is my heart.
by H. P. Lovecraft
All Nature has a Feeling
All nature has a feeling: woods, fields, brooks
Are life eternal: and in silence they
Speak happiness beyond the reach of books;
There’s nothing mortal in them; their decay
Is the green life of change; to pass away
And come again in blooms revivified.
Its birth was heaven, eternal in its stay,
And with the sun and moon shall still abide
Beneath their day and night and heaven wide.
by John Clare (1793 – 1864)
At Crossroads
Bury the head in the east road, the body in the west.
Stuff the mouth with garlic.
Take the wrong path, lose your life.
Choose: Odin, Mercury, Hecate, Mephistopheles.
Oedipus met his destiny here.
Faust summoned his.
Nothing confuses a devil like choices.
Know that you can save your soul if you are cunning.
Some gathered in the moonlight, sacred grounds.
Others built gallows, dug graves.
© Sandra Moore Colman
Dream Stag
And I dreamed of a deep snowed field, and a black stag,
And a man that was almost me, hunted with a black spear,
Snowfall unmaking footprints, as shadow hunted shadow,
Each waiting for the other to fall prey to hungers hollow.
© Rich Blackett
Wishbones
She lays out wishbones, boiled and polished,
or painted gold with leaf-green ribbons
at each empty sitting. Soon they will snap
like twigs, like innocence, teaching the power
of will, and dominion over bird and beast,
a feast for winter.
Upstairs, the tooth fairy,
black-mouthed at the window, sucks dreams
scented with violets and mothballs from a room
bare of all but stripped beds and damp pillowcases.
And outside, splints pitch from coarse loam,
catching pale moonlight. Sleep, little one, sleep:
the night is big and lonely, your garden’s growing
pale.
© Oz Hardwick
Mycelium
I have kissed corpses,
at the breaking of day,
half buried in bushes,
flesh rotting away.
For the greener the moss,
the greater my hunger,
where there’s well nourished soil,
the lost are there under.
I feed on the remnants,of life gone before,
crawling through forests,
feasting on gore.
A tree or a rambler,
just something past living,
join the circle of life,
their goodness they’re giving.
So pluck my fruit from me,
and devour with knives,
the recycled bodies,
of all the lost lives.
© Katrinia Rindsberg
Special thanks to Andy Paciorek and Folk-Horror Revival for letting us have full access to the book.
(We have a number of Folk-Horror related interviews on the site which might also interest you, including a huge two-parter with artist, writer and editor Andy Paciorek, plus artist Cobweb Mehers, writer/photographer David Senior and artist Paul Watson. You can start here: folk horror interviews or click Folk Horror in the tag cloud, left)
That’s us done for today. You may notice that we now have a separate section for Occult Detective Quarterly news (top right) – click the text or the image up there to find out more. – and subscribe if you want to be kept up to date. See you again soon, we hope…
