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Featuring ten collage illustrations by the author, Helen Ivory’s new poetry collection Constructing a Witch fixes on the monstering and the scapegoating of women and on the fear of ageing femininity.
In this collection, the witch appears as the barren, child-eating hag; she is a lustful seductress luring men to a path of corruption; she is a powerful or cantankerous woman whose cursing must be silenced by force. These bewitching poems explore the witch archetype and the witch as human woman. They examine the nature of superstition and the necessity of magic and counter-magic to gain a fingerhold of agency, when life is chaotic and fragile. In the poems of Constructing a Witch Helen Ivory investigates witch tourism, the witch as outsider, cultural representations of the witch, female power and disempowerment, the menopause, and how the female body has been used and misunderstood for centuries. Constructing a Witch is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
'Helen Ivory, a highly individualistic poet and visual artist, conjures a world that is both magical and sharply real. As in freshly conceived fairy tales, everything is transmutable. She expresses the intrinsic strangenesses of life, and makes a brilliant contribution to female empowerment through poems that are disturbing, agile, and visually telling.' – Moniza Alvi, Cholmondeley Award co-judge
'Helen Ivory, whose voice reminds me of the unsmiling mask of Buster Keaton—how, with drollness and play, she provides a map of the everyday bizarre and often whimsical possibilities of life lived through a highly playful, rather dark, and deeply imaginative vision. Is there a little Stevie Smith at play here? A little Brothers Grimm? Those and that of a newsreader who has gone off-script and is showing us wherever the expected has yielded to the uncanny and unusual? These poems are a delight for the assurance she provides that everyday wonders, surprises, and quotidian horrors are in our reach and accessible through her word ministry. Brave and imaginative! Read this book.' - Maxine Chernoff
12 {By the slant of her tone}
13 The Waking
14 Some definitions of Witch
16 The lust of the goat is the bounty of God
17 Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast
18 Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?
19 Another Story
20 We are the weirdos mister
21 {daughters of air}
22 The Answer
23 Only Bad Witches Are Ugly
24 The Woman of Endor to Saul
25 Night Hag
26 One Such Tale
27 Scry
28 Day’s Conversation with Night
29 More thoughts about the dark
30 The Antihousewife
31 Dairying
32 {gnats, swarm upon swarm}
33 Remedy
34 How to Construct an Ale Witch
35 New Rules for the Disenchanted Land
36 Cackle
37 The Gift
38 Fetish to Counteract Witchcraft
39 {and thus the riddle has been read}
40 The Moon’s Halo
41 Protection Ink
42 At the Witchcraft Museum
43 Hexentanz
44 Häxan
45 The Original Bad Girl
46 To a Painter
47 All about the hair
48 More thoughts about the body
49 {a cluster of pretty berries}
50 Margaret Johnson
51 Elizabeth Tibbots
52 Lilias Adie (c. 1640-1704)
53 Walking the Witch
54 The Devil’s Mark
55 More thoughts about the Witch Finder
56 {Shall the boys come and hang, burn or roast you?}
57 Pendle Tourist
58 Bridget Bishop
59 The Good People of Salem
60 Samuel Parris Dreams of Dogs
61 The Makings
62 Witchfinder Tour
63 Mistley Pond Washes its Hands
65 {familiar spirits]
66 More thoughts about the moon
67 Prick
68 Resistance Spells
68 Spell to Take Back the Night
69 Summoning Spell: The Body
70 Disarming Spell: The Enchanter
71 {The church-bells began to ring}
72 ‘Grandmother Moorhead’s Aromatic Kitchen’
73 The Watcher
74 The Happenings
77 Hang the Moon
78 The Menstruous Woman
79 Brain Fog
80 The Change
81 ‘Invidia’ (‘Envy’)
82 {shortly after midnight}
83 Tick-Tock
84 Thirteen Million
85 This whole thing was nearly never a thing
86 34 Symptoms of the Menopause
88 Votive
89 ‘The Spirit of the Storm’
90 {fire as fire}
93 Acknowledgements
95 About the collage/poems