Sam Retallick's The Winter Wizard is a folkloric sequence that blends whimsy, melancholy, and myth in an imaginative coming-of-age narrative. Set in a liminal landscape...

Sam Retallick's The Winter Wizard is a folkloric sequence that blends whimsy, melancholy, and myth in an imaginative coming-of-age narrative. Set in a liminal landscape of moor, woodland, and sea, the poem conjures a dreamlike Cornwall populated by magical figures, talking bobbins, and vanished saints. Through deceptively simple language and shifting forms, Retallick explores grief, seasonal transition, and queer self-invention with a lyrical clarity that holds both humour and tenderness. The result is a strange and quietly moving mythopoeic tale shaped by place, magic, and memory.