When you think of dirt, do you imagine it here, near, as part of your environment, or even a part of yourself? Most likely, when you think of dirt, it’s far and away: somewhere, or someone, else. Images of place linked to all manner of muck might float into your mind, from toilets and sewers to boglands and bits of waste ground. If there’s dirt in a home, then you probably don’t think of it in your home – that’s elsewhere. If there’s dirt on a person, you don’t imagine it as on yourself; you imagine the dirty nails of an unkempt, uncared for child, or the unwashed torso of a down-and-out, pungent on the street or sweating like an old cheese in the hostel. You, you are ‘in and up’, rather than down-and-out, surely. And you are adult, not child, and therefore know the importance of handwashing, bathing, brushing; the daily ritual of toothbrush and floss. You keep your fingernails neat and clean – don’t you? You change your underwear and apply deodorant as regularly as necessary. You are clean – and dirt is far and away – right?

But some people just don’t feel this way. I never did. Dirt for me was always under my skin. I felt myself made from it. My relationship with my body was warped, undoubtedly, and the reason for this was childhood sexual abuse. I had been dirtied, and I carried that dirt around, it seemed, feeling made of it. And, it wasn’t the sort of dirt from which I felt anything might ever grow: it was filthy, infertile stuff; waste; refuse. Until the age of almost 30 I covered my body from head to toe, always wearing collars so I could hide my skin away. I could only ever loosen up under the influence of drink, with which I had an uneasy and sometimes dependent relationship.

At the same time, I yearned for something more, and was what you might call a spiritual seeker, belonging to various groups and attending different meditation, healing, and psychic development sessions. It was at the age of 30 that I experienced a big change – the first very marked energetic shift in this life – but still, although I stopped thinking I was made of dirt, body shame and dysmorphia proved hard to instantly shake away, and are still issues I am working to address now.

Beauty has been a great balm in my life, luckily. When I first encountered wetlands, they seemed incredibly beautiful, with near translucent golden heads of feather grass waving me into a green and lushly vegetated landscape. Blue pools of water glittered like gorgeous eyes everywhere, and the myriad birds were like swooping, swimming jewels within the swathes of blue and green. But it was summer then. In other seasons – and particularly in Wales’s wet climate, with so many words for rain in Welsh that it’s something akin to ‘snow’ in the language of some colder terrains – the wetlands – of which Wales, with water on three of its sides, has many -– look less appealing. At those times, they’re apt to be muddy and mulchy, mired in muck and with a brown or grey appearance. Slushy sludge and gulchy goo are the order of the day. Dirt, essentially.

Bog Witch draws a parallel between the body of earth we call wetlands and the body on Earth we call woman, therefore. My body, as mentioned, has always seemed a gloopy, floppy, gelatinous sort of thing, making its messes and entirely beyond my control. I’ve cut it and punched it, starved it and stuffed it, poisoned it with alcohol and refused to hear its cries. Wetlands, too, have been depleted and destroyed, their richesse of flora and fauna treated as a disgusting, barely tolerable commodity; they are generally, in the modern day, under continuous threat from climate change or urban development, and as a poet I know of hardly any verses which take them as a subject, and only one which shows them in a positive light. They are the ‘bog of eternal stench’, a la the film Labyrinth, or ‘the swamp of sadness’, as per the movie Neverending Story, two favourites of my childhood. Whether it’s her or here, therefore – the female form or the mucky bog places – these fecund forms seem dirty, to us, and hold little cultural value as a result.

I wanted to show in Bog Witch both the beauty of the swamp and a parallel story of acceptance in which I grow to love my body. The personal and the profound, a deep sense of place and the prospect of transmuting our view of both Earth and self, intertwine in this work. Whilst not a witch per se, I point out some ways and means which might be developed by the more witchy amongst you into your own particular magic. Wetlands are a great ‘source-place’, full of life, lore, and vitality. The plants there may be mired in dirt, but they are generally fascinating, and of course it’s the dirt that makes them grow. I, too, began in dirt – a sense of myself as dirty – but have grown towards the light. It is our nature to do so. Understanding the marvellous processes of wetlands, in their ecosystems as well as within their many benefits e.g. how they prevent flooding, minimise coastal erosion, and hold carbon (they are often referred to as the ‘kidneys of the earth’), has made me reflect on my own body and its own marvellous mechanisms. It, too, has its preventative measures and means of keeping its own ecosystem in check. It is a machine of miracles, of interdependent processes that are, in their own way, magical.

The wetlands have acted as a kind of mirror, therefore, and I feel them as a deeply mystical place: a nebulous place, too, that’s not quite water, not quite land. There’s a special kind of atmosphere, here, as a result, and I would encourage you to consider the wetland as a place to inspire your next poems and songs, rituals and spells. Bog Witch features a number of poems inspired by its sometimes bare and bleak, yet always extraordinary, scenery, and when you walk its ways chants and tunes seem to spring at your lips. Speaking of chants, the book’s structure comes from that of the Three Witches in Macbeth, as I was interested to note that many of the animals mentioned in the first part of that piece are typical wetland creatures – frog, bat, newt, amongst others – and, whilst there is a theory that these terms are perhaps slang names for various herbs, the plants in that case may also potentially be found in British wetland areas. I explore the symbolism and folklore surrounding these animals in the book, and hope that these evocations, too, might inspire others’ creativity and imagination, as well as invocations and rituals which are wetland-based.

Thanks to the wetlands, I am grateful, now, for the dirt. I no longer see it as part of me, but without it at my root – my beginning in life – I never would have reached up towards the light. Perhaps, after saying I am not a witch for so long, and being afraid to be who I really am inside in a public way, I may even become a bog witch myself, who knows!

Mab Jones is a “unique talent” (The Times) who has read her work all over the UK, in the US, France, Ireland and Japan. She is the winner of many awards and accolades, including the John Tripp Spoken Poetry Audience Award, the Word Factory Neil Gaiman Short Story competition, the Wolverhampton Literature Festival Poetry Prize, the Aurora Poetry Prize, the Rabbit Heart Poetry Film Festival Grand Jury Prize, and the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize, amongst others.

Mab has made and presented several BBC radio programmes with a poetic theme, and has also appeared on BBC television. She has written for the New York Times, was coordinator of International Dylan Thomas Day, and was, for a time, the social media manager for world famous writer Wilbur Smith. As a poet, she is the author of three published collections and three pamphlets. She additionally runs two small presses, and has been publishing since she was a teenager.

Bog Witch is Mab’s first book of prose, inspired by her ongoing residency in Cardiff Wetlands and her associated podcast which encompasses all the wetlands of Wales. This work was also supported by a Royal Society of Literature ‘Literature Matters’ Award. As well as following an individual and often eclectic spiritual path, she also enjoys comedy, crochet, crafts, costume jewellery, colour, and cooking. Mab hails from Wales.

For more information: https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/authors/mab-jones