Have you heard the story of the mysterious woman’s body found in a tree in the West Midlands in 1943?
A group of boys out hunting rabbits found her, and a few months later the phrase Who put Bella in the Wych-Elm? appeared on walls around the area. There’s been a lot of folklore built up around ‘Bella’, but from what I’ve read she was probably a Dutch refugee murdered by her boyfriend, a Dutch smuggler, and hidden by the boyfriend and an English friend. The English friend made a death-bed confession to his wife decades later.
Bella has inspired the poet R.M. Francis and he’s produced a book of poetry. Please enjoy the cover reveal.
Blurb for Bella by R.M. Francis
A spectre has haunted Netherton for generations.
Everyone has a theory, no one has an answer.
The woods that frame the housing estate uncover a series of heinous acts, drawing onlookers in to a space of clandestine, queer sexuality: a liminal space of abject and uncanny experience.
A question echoes in the odd borderlands of being, of fear-fascination, attraction-repulsion, of sex and death…
Who put Bella down the Wych-Elm?
R. M. Francis is a writer from Dudley. He completed his PhD at the University of Wolverhampton for a project titled Queering the Black Country and graduated from Teesside University for his Creative Writing MA.
He’s the author of four poetry chapbooks, Transitions (The Black Light Engine Room Press, 2015), Orpheus (Lapwing Publications, 2016), Corvus’ Burnt-Wing Love Balm and Cure-All (The Black Light Engine Room Press, 2018) and Lamella, (Original Plus, 2019).
Follow Rob on Twitter @rmfrancis
Everything Is Better With Dragons 