Another gap; of Imbolc and pink skies and fiery horses. February has been muddy. Each day the minutes before sunset claw back in threes. This month brings a change to our Artist in Conversation structure. I’ve been speaking with writer Anushka Shah, working in response to her poem – ‘The Cottingley Cuttings’.
Lilting and melancholic, Anushka’s poem stirs between folkloric memory and streams of bold consciousness. Working from Anushka’s writing, I’ve created a series of artworks to accompany her work. My own artistic practice is primarily textiles based, and I felt it was right to bring this work to Anushka’s poetry. In the pieces I’ve made, each stitch acts as a length of stanza, a lapse of thought. Shapes folded in calico, embroidered in thread, are manipulated by her words, building in complimentary abstraction.
Anushka writes of her work:
‘The Cottingley Cuttings’ explores themes of truth and consciousness. Based on a retelling of the Cottingley fairy hoax, the poem’s narrator is acutely aware of her lack of power (political consciousness). Consciousness can also be understood as awareness or perception of one’s surroundings; the poem considers the alleged perception of fairies. Through these five stanzas, the reader is invited to take a sidelong glance at truth and consider what it is that we might know or not know, and what that might mean for our interactions.
I hope these poems and artworks can act as a virtual exhibition, merging and building within each other as art intertwined. If 26 proves anything, it’s that what is made and what is written is never far apart.
The Cottingley Cuttings
Anushka Shah
i. Square One
My nose is close to the paper
my mouth hangs slightly ajar
call it concentration
or a kind of respiration
I breathe life into my fairy
as I trace her from my book.
Square One.
Embroidered thread on Calico, 200mmx365mm, 2026.
ii. A Trick or Two
I am undertaking an activity
too easily dismissed
as ‘girlish playing’
of little or no substance
my substantive sets of figures
are deceiving a nation.
‘Deceiving’, I think, is misleading.
I am capturing truth
in fishing nets of fancy
capturing fairies on father’s film.
With some sleight of hand
I hand to idealists
a sight of their ideals
dressed in gossamer.
A Trick or Two
Embroidered thread on Calico, 625mmx280mm, 2026.
iii. Phony as a Three-Dollar Bill
We make and make up the news
and there is an irony
in being featured on pages
other girls will cut and trace.
By ‘we’ I mean me
and Little Cousin Frances
nations are rarely at the beck
and call of two young girls
but given photographic evidence
of fairies by Cottingley Beck
a nation sits up and listens.
Her coat slips off her back
as she straightens up and
her shoulders fall back in surprise.
Some things (unlike coats)
cannot simply be shrugged off.
Some things cannot be simple.
Other things cannot be.
Phony as a Three-Dollar Bill
Patchwork on Calico, 455mmx270mm, 2026.
iv. Breaking the Fourth Wall
Kodak and Conan Doyle
not foolish, still fooled.
Fixated on fool’s gold
or foolish fire
will-o’-the-wisp hard to catch
will-o’-the-wisp hard to keep
will-all-the-whispers
burn us in our sleep.
Frances rats.
You are right, we lied.
Breaking the Fourth Wall
Embroidered thread and collaged patch on Calico, 625mmx280mm, 2026.
v. Taking the Fifth
Four of the five photos are lies
but what of photo number five?
Frances, partner in craft
comrade in crime
insists the last are not the paper kind
rather, they are fairies made of life
they appear in our waking dreams
and at night when we close our eyes.
Taking the Fifth
Embroidered thread on calico, 200mmx365mm, 2026.
Anushka Shah is a London-based creative writer with a focus on sustainable fashion and contemporary culture. She is the writer behind Pantoscope, an exploratory project delving into what it is like to be another person through interviews, prose, poetry, book reviews, and articles. Anushka is winner of 26’s Emerging Writer 2024 and won Poet Laureate at her college at Oxford University.
Joni Brown moves through wildness as a practice of repetition and renewal. As paths and circles connect and collide, each thread amasses a kaleidoscopic map, embroidering a guide of its travels and passings as the needle drags and ebbs through the wake. Joni is a freelance writer, and the co-founder of Unquiet Press – a publication platforming intersectional folklore through contemporary art and writing.