The Figlet Issue Six brings together 72 Isle of Wight writers and artists across more than 140 pages of poetry, fiction, memoir, essays, painting, photography, illustration and cartoons.

The Island itself has a strong presence. Alan Daysh’s paintings capture the changing light and landscape of Brading and the Downs, while chines become places of myth and invention, goddesses inhabit familiar locations and West Wight: Portraits of a Landscape explores the relationship between people and place. The Biosphere Festival returns to The Figlet too, with Maggie Sawkins judging our poetry competition and Martha Henson tracing the extraordinary growth of the Island festival. From Bembridge, a hunt for tiny plastic nurdles travels from beach to gallery through environmental art and poetry.

But Issue Six ranges far beyond landscape. Cheryl May takes us behind the scenes of British pantomime, while elsewhere Handel rubs shoulders with punk, Tennyson keeps company with pantomime dames, and an old tin kettle shares space with a lamprey-like sea creature. There are stories of love, grief, ageing and memory; writing about music, theatre, folklore and history; photographs of solitude; strange creatures, stranger encounters — and a surprising number of chickens.

Our featured theme, Fair or Foul, begins with Shakespeare’s Weird Sisters and heads rapidly elsewhere. Witches acquire mobile phones, fair becomes fowl, fake news gets everywhere, and contributors turn their attention to justice, power, prejudice, deception, evil and the many ways in which appearances can mislead.

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Issue 6 is what giving a fig looks like. Grab your copy today…