Judith Wilkinson Sphinx Moth 15 October 2026. 67 pp. ISBN 978-3-901993-90-9 £12.00 (+ 4.00 p&p), €12.00 (+ 4.00 p&p), US$ 14.00 (+ 8.00 p&p)   "Judith Wilkinson's collection Sphinx Moth explores journeys of transformation and the courage it takes to redefine oneself. Whether it's the trauma of war, life within a cult, the echo of a broken relationship or the confinement of a cocoon; there's a persistent sense of entrapment - of something to break away from. Most poems circle the themes of fear and permission, while the speakers think, feel and act in Wilkinson's distinct poetic voice: calmly observant, endearingly surprised and keenly aware of the powers at play. By cleverly tying them together with recurring words and images, the 30+ poems in Sphinx Moth form a journey of their own - one of reflecting on the past with self-compassion and flying into new-found freedom: 'the debris of me / no longer my concern.'" Cecile Bol "This new collection by the distinguished Anglo-Dutch poet and translator, Judith Wilkinson, begins with an epigraph from Ted Hughes's Tales from Ovid, a deeply appropriate starting-point for poems which offer a powerful and moving exploration of many aspects of metamorphosis. The title poem takes the contrast between a caterpillar and the emergent moth as a metaphor for personal recovery and the rediscovery of freedom, while others draw on fairy tales and expressive forms to depict transformations. The collection is permeated by a 'perfect hint of loss', beautifully explored in poised and lucid language, but also by the perception that green shoots of hope may be tentatively growing. The sequence of lyrics in memory of the poet's mother and her Jewish forebears is particularly intense and affecting, while the brilliant "Imagining Beethoven in His Deafness" is typical of Wilkinson's own deftness in finding 'melody in muteness' and 'whirlwinds in silence'." Helen Wilcox

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Table of Contents

Excerpts from Sphinx Moth

No butterfly poems

I'd said.

The dead cocoon that has sealed me for days
holds no promise of flight.
If I prised it open,
I'd find nothing but the green-brown snot of my gloom,
no trace of a living creature.

There's nothing old left to build on,
no foundation sturdy enough for growth.
My mood's architecture, muscle, gut, nerve,
swallowed up by decay,
surrendered to this primal sludge.

The only thing going for it
is that it doesn't smell like decay.
It smells like a forest after rain, where you
gather yourself as scraps of doubt sink away in moss
and you can be as lost as you need to be.

Being promoted to butterfly
means having a belief in the nectar
that pulls you away from yourself,
subverting your story,
leaving no way back.
 

Your Cat, Jacob

Nervous at thresholds, suspicious of novelty,
he never tried his luck or staked a claim,
he didn't whine, no hunger made him bold,
theft was anathema to him. His mind tuned to omens,
he had an inborn sense of the forbidden
and you forbade him nothing. Spooked by the dark
he'd tiptoe into the garden as if entering a nightmare,
quivering and hissing at foes no-one could spot.
But you brought calm: your arms a home for him
to linger in, eyes closed, feet in the air like a dead bird.
He could take on bliss as if a spell had been cast,
a letting go we'd never seen in cats.
Then tiredness caught him, loosened his ginger coat,
made him giddy, distant, step out.
 

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