Banishing the Branks

BilliLit, Billingshurst’s Book Festival takes place from April 25th to the 27th 2025. To help promote the Open Mic event, I was invited to make a video of one of my poems. I picked ‘Banishing the Branks’ from Silence & Selvedge, and enlisted the help of my teenage son to film and edit.

The poem was inspired by a visit to a museum in Sheffield, where I encountered an object on display that I’d never seen before: the branks, or scold’s bridle. It was an instrument of punishment for women that, astonishingly, remained part of British Statute until 1967.

Tickets for BilliLit are on sale at WeGotTickets.