Trilogy

Trilogy: wife:widow:witch
by Katie Jenkins
Artwork by Matt Oxborrow (Duolingo, Headspace, M&S)
Published by The Broken Spine

Katie Jenkins, co-poetry editor of The Broken Spine, makes her ferocious debut with Trilogy: wife:widow:witch; a poetry collection as raw and revelatory as they come. In these three stages of transformation, Jenkins dismantles the roles women are assigned, endure, and ultimately rewrite.

From the rot of the marital home to the white-hot silence of loss, to the primal howl of becoming, these poems traverse love, grief, and reclamation with precision and power. Jenkins writes with a blade in her pen, but what cuts here also heals.

"He wanted to see you. I would not prevent it.
He lay his head on your still-warm chest, forcing air
from your parted mouth, your slackened jaw,
a final snore. I turned steel. Heat-blasted ore."
- from Deathbed

"Because she came from a broken home.
Because they flocked to her like crows
round a wishing well
Because she took it standing up....
Because she was the one who didn't die."
- from Because

This is poetry that doesn't blink. That coexists with ghosts. That finds a strange and glorious grace in the mess.

Featuring artwork by Matt Oxborrow, whose visuals have defined campaigns for Duolingo, Headspace, and M&S, the book is as bold in design as it is in voice.

Katie Jenkins is a writer from the South West whose work has appeared in The Guardian and Everyman's Library. All author proceeds from this title go to Pancreatic Cancer UK.

Advance Praise for Trilogy: wife:widow:witch

"Katie Jenkins' Trilogy: wife:widow:witch evokes powerful imagery to portray three primary (and primal) truths about life. The inevitable fate of life, its uncontrollable nature, and what it means to survive the loss of it... Each strand, alchemically strong, strings together the whole; a weave of life itself."
- Karen Pierce Gonzalez, Moon Kissed, Earth Wrought, Vision Drunk, and Down River with Li Po

"A stirring take on grief, love and what endures. These poems beautifully articulate the devastation of loss, but are also unafraid (like a 'ribbon whipping on the wind') to examine the dark treasure of a life built around absence. The upshot is an enormously powerful read."
- Nicky Kippax, Northern Writers Award 2022, co-host of Rise Up!

"A haunting and graceful cycle of poems tracing a woman's transformation through love, loss, and reclamation. Structured as three distinct yet interwoven identities, wife, widow, and witch, Jenkins' voice moves from the domestic to the mythic, from silence to spell."
- Jane Thomas, author of The Absence of Presence, Literature Matters Award winner 2025