Morag Smith's dynamic Spoil shows the earthy underbelly of Cornwall, one preoccupied by land and capital, and who has access to it. Meet the 21st century, rabbit-skinning, 'queens of the road', driving their trucks to another site 'hemmed in by dark curves of gorse', with the 'landscape emptied', where 'The whole idea of home / disintegrates'. Meet the 18th century bal maidens, girls and women breaking stones above the mines, worked into the ground, 'like I ain't felt the fist'. In Morag Smith, Kernow has a powerful, essential, contemporary poetic voice.

 

Katrina Naomi