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Something In Nothing
Something in Nothing is a narrative sequence of poems with echoes of Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood
The collection weaves together the lives of various fairytale characters in a contemporary setting to explore universal issues, in particular the denial of evil – the “something in nothing” of the collection’s title.
At the heart of the sequence is the story of the serial killer Bluebeard and the Luminous Girl. Other characters include the elderly couple Beauty and Beast, the Slavic witch and ex-goddess Baba Yaga, a non-magical Godmother and a useless angel. By using fairy tales, these poems allow us a safe place to study the darkness. The poems are elemental and yet personal, out of time and yet terribly current. We are not part of Bluebeard’s and Baba Yaga’s world, but we could be.
The collection weaves together the lives of various fairytale characters in a contemporary setting to explore universal issues, in particular the denial of evil – the “something in nothing” of the collection’s title.
At the heart of the sequence is the story of the serial killer Bluebeard and the Luminous Girl. Other characters include the elderly couple Beauty and Beast, the Slavic witch and ex-goddess Baba Yaga, a non-magical Godmother and a useless angel. By using fairy tales, these poems allow us a safe place to study the darkness. The poems are elemental and yet personal, out of time and yet terribly current. We are not part of Bluebeard’s and Baba Yaga’s world, but we could be.
72 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2026
About the author
Zoe Brooks
22 books59 followersI am a British writer and poet. I spend half my life in a partly restored old farmhouse in the Czech Republic, where I write all my novels and poetry. I aim to write popular books, which have complex characters and themes that get under the reader's skin. My fantasy adventure novel Mother of Wolves is available on Amazon. The three books (Girl in The Glass, Love of Shadows and The Company of Shadows of my Healer's Shadow Trilogy are also available and my long poem for voices Fool's Paradise, which won the EPIC prize for best poetry book.
I have two blogs. One is my personal blog http://zoebrooks.blogspot.com. The second is the magic realism blog, on which I read and review a different magic realism book a week, it's on http://www.magic-realism.net.
I also have a weekly online newspaper http://www.womens-fiction.net, which features the best articles about books by and for women.
I was a successful published poet in my teens and twenties, (featuring in the Grandchildren of Albion anthology). Then my son arrived and I was juggling motherhood and career and somehow there wasn't time for the writing. So many women will know how that feels. I regretted it of course and I kept on writing in my head.
I worked with disadvantaged people for about twenty years. It was emotionally hard work but very rewarding. But it took its toll and a few years ago I realized that I couldn't continue. I needed to start writing again.
In my career I had listened to so many brave women (and men and children), to their stories of the terrible things that happened to them and of their survival. I'd worked with asylum seekers, the homeless, abused women, people whose lives have been broken, women like the central character in Girl in the Glass. I have never had their experiences and I suppose the only way I could start understanding was to work it through using my imagination. Not that the central character in Girl in the Glass is any one woman, she isn't, her story is her own.
I have two blogs. One is my personal blog http://zoebrooks.blogspot.com. The second is the magic realism blog, on which I read and review a different magic realism book a week, it's on http://www.magic-realism.net.
I also have a weekly online newspaper http://www.womens-fiction.net, which features the best articles about books by and for women.
I was a successful published poet in my teens and twenties, (featuring in the Grandchildren of Albion anthology). Then my son arrived and I was juggling motherhood and career and somehow there wasn't time for the writing. So many women will know how that feels. I regretted it of course and I kept on writing in my head.
I worked with disadvantaged people for about twenty years. It was emotionally hard work but very rewarding. But it took its toll and a few years ago I realized that I couldn't continue. I needed to start writing again.
In my career I had listened to so many brave women (and men and children), to their stories of the terrible things that happened to them and of their survival. I'd worked with asylum seekers, the homeless, abused women, people whose lives have been broken, women like the central character in Girl in the Glass. I have never had their experiences and I suppose the only way I could start understanding was to work it through using my imagination. Not that the central character in Girl in the Glass is any one woman, she isn't, her story is her own.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 7, 2026
Perhaps the fairy tales you were told at bedtime ended with and they all lived happily ever after. Stories in which the perils were overcome, and the moral was outlined clearly at the end.
When Zoe Brooks addresses the reader in her poetry collection Something In Nothing, she is quick to warn us that here things do not end neatly and cleanly. As the answers tell us in Happy Ever After – A Catechism we know not to “rely on breadcrumbs” and “when midnight strikes to hurry home”, but true to the original versions of fairy tales Brooks shows us the darker side, where “when a shoe does not fit cut off your toe”.
The characters chosen for this book weave in and out of the pages as we peer through different lenses. Bluebeard’s Garden has us watching Bluebeard’s new wife carrying out tasks in the garden and sighing because “Nothing lives long in Bluebeard’s garden”. In Cathedral we too feel the chill as the girl recognises that “there is a devil in the choir of angels”, and we, as readers, shudder at the horror of “wagons to be emptied, ovens to be stoked” in Endless Consumption.
The observational simplicity of fairy tale story telling is used to excellent effect in all the Baba Yaga poems and I found myself rereading these as a single sequence after reading this collection. There is a tightness here that strips things right back enabling the reader to hear the story, and watch the narrative unfold whilst all the time knowing the happy ever after is not on its way.
When we look here, we are shown ashes and dust. When we listen, we hear the echoes of words unsaid and warnings unheeded. We know there is something lurking in the shadows, that threatening things are behind us and also in plain sight. Something in Nothing is a book of hagstones, and unoiled hinges that has us looking to see what is hidden in all kinds of darkness.
When Zoe Brooks addresses the reader in her poetry collection Something In Nothing, she is quick to warn us that here things do not end neatly and cleanly. As the answers tell us in Happy Ever After – A Catechism we know not to “rely on breadcrumbs” and “when midnight strikes to hurry home”, but true to the original versions of fairy tales Brooks shows us the darker side, where “when a shoe does not fit cut off your toe”.
The characters chosen for this book weave in and out of the pages as we peer through different lenses. Bluebeard’s Garden has us watching Bluebeard’s new wife carrying out tasks in the garden and sighing because “Nothing lives long in Bluebeard’s garden”. In Cathedral we too feel the chill as the girl recognises that “there is a devil in the choir of angels”, and we, as readers, shudder at the horror of “wagons to be emptied, ovens to be stoked” in Endless Consumption.
The observational simplicity of fairy tale story telling is used to excellent effect in all the Baba Yaga poems and I found myself rereading these as a single sequence after reading this collection. There is a tightness here that strips things right back enabling the reader to hear the story, and watch the narrative unfold whilst all the time knowing the happy ever after is not on its way.
When we look here, we are shown ashes and dust. When we listen, we hear the echoes of words unsaid and warnings unheeded. We know there is something lurking in the shadows, that threatening things are behind us and also in plain sight. Something in Nothing is a book of hagstones, and unoiled hinges that has us looking to see what is hidden in all kinds of darkness.
Displaying 1 of 1 review