Seamus Heaney said that poetry has never been fully secularised. I read this as meaning it is haunted by the ghosts of faith. Some poets embrace these spectres. Consider Camille Ralphs’ disconcertingly accomplished debut, After You Were, I Am (Faber, £12.99; Tablet price £11.69). In three sections – comprising responses to the prayers of historical faith figures, dramatic monologues from the Pendle Witch Trials and, finally, a reimagining of the tragedy of cleric-magus John Dee – Ralphs tests out language’s load-bearing capacity: can it still carry our near-discarded faith inheritance?