A new poetry collection by a Welsh Caribbean poet explores “finding solace in landscape when the human world is rejecting you”.

Emily Zobel Marshall’s mum used to joke that she was the only black woman in a 50-mile radius in the small village of Croesor.

Growing up at the foot of the Cnicht mountain, in a house a kilometre from the road, her isolation was instead filled with Welsh folklore, finding kinship in the stories hidden in the landscape, tucked into crevices and written into the lines of summits.

Now in her 40s, Emily said: “The landscape where you grow up seeps into your soul.

“It fascinates me how, especially when you’re walking through Eryri, the landscape is shaped by stories.

“Wales shares a connection with the Caribbean in that its culture has been oppressed by the English.

“People have found ways to survive in their cultural forms, in their mythology, and in their beings.”

Now based in Leeds, a professor of post-colonial literature, she writes about witches, sirens, mermaids and wild women in her new poetry collection, Other Wild.

Published on 2 October by Peepal Tree Press, Other Wild “explores the lives of errant women and creatures who refuse to adhere to official paths, and the liminal, boundary-crossing wildscapes of the land and heart”.

Having attended a Welsh language school with 15 other students, “speaking Welsh but not sounding Welsh” and “being mixed with big bushy hair” got her teased by the other kids: “There was a sense of always being othered.”

So she instead found connection in the strange women and creatures of the Mabinogion - stories written down from oral tradition in the 12th and 13th centuries - which were “part of our daily diet of storytelling”.

She explains: “My poems are focused on the natural world as a source of healing, exploring from an othered perspective.

“It’s a lot about errant women who refuse to stick to official paths”.

Now an accredited mountain leader, she is one of few female mountain leaders of colour, and actively advocates for diversity and inclusion in outdoor spaces.

As well as mountains, the long-standing Browsers Bookshop in Porthmadog (her nearest town) was her respite - an independent bookshop that has been going since 1974.

Speaking for National Bookshop Day on 11 October, she said: “I’d go there to read - the smell of the books in that space, it was a little sanctuary away from the rest of the world.

“They’re unique spaces where you can go and immerse yourself in another world.

“Especially now when we live such digitally driven lives, glued to our phones looking at bite-sized information, reading is an activity that slows you down and stops the busy mind - there’s something very meditative about it that’s a good counterbalance for the digital age.”

Other Wild is available to order now - https://www.peepaltreepress.com/books/other-wild

Catch Emily at a talk about folktales at Plas Prondanw in Garreg this November, with tickets available here - https://www.tickettailor.com/events/ymddiriedolaethsusanwilliamsellisfoundation/1730417