Folk traditions honour the agricultural year that ties us to land, to plants, to growth, giving us a sense of place, identity and community. It is through the fabrics of life, the woven cloth, the winter wool, the textures of storytelling, this maker’s craft that Cameron’s Whirligig finds a sense of belonging. The spindle unspools, the poems unfurl. There is the rhythm of movement in the poetry, a wild spinning of the community driven by the merry parade, be it the joys of a summer fête, a pagan rite or the workers lament. Cameron’s poems resonate with Joyce’s strings in the earth and air, finding solace in nature and poetry even in times of change and uprooting. The Whirligig spins us in a dance both eerily novel and uncannily familiar, come ‘criss-cross under moonlight,’ ‘the Night is a hymn,’ bring your ‘worn-out soles.’
Fiona Cameron is an artist and poet who was born in Andover in 1998, studied at Ruskin School of Art, Oxford and now lives in Leeds. She sailed a homemade raft across the flooded fields of County Durham (2026), she left a message on the gatepost by Field Shelter in Haltwhistle (2025), and she placed a bracelet of blue agate in the roots of a dying tree, near Ben Vrackie (2024). Whilst in Middlesbrough she set up Dead Letter Office (2025), a mail art network and living archive of quiet correspondence and quiet resistance. Whirligig (Kulvert, 2026) is her debut poetry collection – assembled like one would build a cairn. She continues to create at her own gentle pace.
KV22
ISBN TBA
60 pp.
A6 pocket paperback.
Printed on fully recycled paper.
