Femina Culpa is a poetry collective bringing together four poets based in County Down and Belfast: Emma McKervey, Milena Williamson, Linda McKenna and Kelly Creighton.
The collective formed in 2024, when the poets discovered a shared preoccupation in their work. Their poetry collections at the time drew on the lives of working-class women and nineteenth-century court cases, exploring women who had encountered the criminal justice system or whose stories survived through accounts of crime.
As their individual work has evolved, so has Femina Culpa. Archival research remains central to the collective’s practice, but its interests extend beyond the courtroom and the nineteenth century. Through poetry, research and engagement with historical materials, Femina Culpa explores women’s agency, the ways women’s lives have been recorded and represented, and the histories that can be recovered, questioned or reimagined through the archive.
- Emma McKervey’s Highland Boundary Fault includes poems based on a Scottish court case in her family history.
- Milena Williamson’s Into The Night That Flies So Fast deals with the case of Bridget Cleary murdered by her family who claimed she was a fairy changeling.
- Linda McKenna’s Four Thousand Keys includes poems inspired by the story of Elizabeth Dunham who was charged with the theft of the keys of the Bank of England.
- Kelly Creighton’s Unbecoming is based on the case of Polly Bodine, the ‘Staten Island Witch’.
Venues where Femina Culpa has performed:
- Clifton House, Belfast
- Sir Hans Sloane Centre, Killyleagh
- Poetry Lounge at the Waterford Gallery of Art, Waterford
- Linen Hall Library, Belfast
- Public Records Office Northern Ireland, Belfast
- Rath Literary Festival, Rathfriland
- Not-So-Secret Book Festival, Carrickfergus
- National Poetry Library at the Southbank Centre, London
- Bank of England Museum, London
- Keats House, London
- Bethlem Museum of the Mind, Kent
- Open House Festival, Bangor
- Seamus Heaney HomePlace, Bellaghy
- Irish Cultural Centre, Hammersmith
- Eastside Arts Festival, Belfast
- Greystones Book Festival, Wicklow
- Aspects Literary Festival, Bangor
Upcoming events:
The Portico Library, Manchester, 24 October 2026
All four poets have wider bodies of published work beyond the projects that first brought Femina Culpa together. You can find out more about their books, research and individual practice through their websites.
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Get in touch
Email: feminaculpa@gmail.com
