Maria Cohut is a writer of Romanian origin who adopted…
Books will turn your head
to heresy, make you believe
the unbelievable,
a Fool, a changeling, or a woman.
There is danger
in the written word, a threat
in the crisp murmur
of the flicking pages.
Libraries – little more than cemeteries
for the sleepless.
over many lives.
It has been trickled
down to us through poisoned
funnels over centuries.
from their own bosoms,
to bury themselves
like wailing refectories
milk, armed with our fathers’
shovels, poised to dig.
when the time comes?
Maria Cohut is a writer of Romanian origin who adopted Britain as her second home well over a decade ago. She is haunted by questions of identity, belonging, displacement, and what makes us human. Her writing has appeared in the Borders & Belonging anthology (Cephalopress, 2022), The Hyacinth Review, The Hellebore, and The Other Side of Hope: Journeys in Refugee and Immigrant Literature, among others. Her first poetry chapbook, Spatter Pattern (back room poetry, 2023), explores the issue of gender violence by reimagining detective fiction tropes. She has two poetry books upcoming in 2025: Skin Me Alive/ Écorche-moi vivante, (bilingual English/French, La Crypte), and Multiple Exposures, (Flight of the Dragonfly).






