A Sudden Stitch. Unfruitful Land. A Fever. In Milk & Moon-water, Milena Williamson uncovers 11 Old English metrical charms – ancient incantations spoken to ward off harm – creatively translating them into magical and medicinal spells for the modern reader. Alongside each reimagining is an original charm poem, a remixed and new telling of an old text. Covering the climate crisis, illness, ageing and fertility, this collection of charms ranges from the incantatory to the unhinged, and reengages with the ancient practice of looking to the land and the body for answers to life’s new and persisting questions.

“Williamson is a bold diviner of wild ritual, remedy, and witch-work. Her poems carry the scent of wolves and burning sage. Milk & Moon-water is a talismanic book—crafty, uncanny, starlit, and full of sass! Step across this threshold into a world where everything trembles with magic.”
~ Annemarie Ní Churreáin

“Milk & Moon-water is a multi-faceted pamphlet that tugs on the thread of folk wisdom that connects us to our forebears. Expansive in its imaginative scope, and rich with vivid imagery, it draws the ancient and the modern together in a manner that reminds us of the continuums of life; of language; of our common humanity. Full of wit, intelligence, and hope, these translations and remixings of Old English show us what ekphrasis can be – a tuning into older frequencies still humming, a communion between the living and the dead.”
~ Jessica Traynor