Constructing a Witch
Published on 24. October 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
96 pages
978-1-78037-719-3 (ISBN)
Description
Despite the Devil being conceived to direct human baseness away from our goodly selves, there has always been sin in the world. The Bible has it that woman is the weaker vessel, therefore her inferior ways could easily let the Devil into the house, and into her oh so corruptible body - and thus the story begins.
Helen Ivory's new collection Constructing a Witch fixes on the monstering and the scapegoating of women and on the fear of ageing femininity. 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.
Poetry Book Society Recommendation. With ten collage illustrations by Helen Ivory.
Helen Ivory's new collection Constructing a Witch fixes on the monstering and the scapegoating of women and on the fear of ageing femininity. 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.
Poetry Book Society Recommendation. With ten collage illustrations by Helen Ivory.
Reviews / Votes
Ivory not only calls attention to the historical practices that have been used to subjugate women, she also reminds us of the process of double-vision: here is an entire collection written in an ironic double-vision, a female writing the female through the male historical gaze. The result is nothing less than what Shuttle describes as "a strong explosion in the sky. -- Elisabeth Sennitt Clough * The North on The Anatomical Venus * The Anatomical Venus is an often disturbing journey of how women have been treated by men through the ages. It is historical reportage. It is controlled and focused anger without sentiment. It is subjugation and oppression laid bare in subtle and often mesmerising ways. It is Angela Carter's eye meets Elaine Showalter's brain. It is dark, upsetting and erotic. And it's laced with magic from the first page until the last. It's the suffering of women, and women fighting back in delicious and unusual ways. It says as much, if not more, about men throughout history as it does about women. Read this book. Then read it again. And again. With each reading, The Anatomical Venus will reveal something new, like all great books do. -- Mark Connors * Northern Soul * Historical it may well be but this collection's contemporary relevance is searing... This collection is a stunningly curated linguistic exhibition on the historical abuse of women. Enticing and yet flinching, this disquieting house of dolls makes abuse seen and urges us to reevaluate why women are where they are now, and it does so with an eerie and unforgettable beauty. -- Rachel Smart * Rachel Smart, Storgy Magazine, on The Anatomical Venus *More details
Edition
Paperback original
Language
English
Place of publication
Tyne and Wear
United Kingdom
Product notice
Paperback (UK-trade)
Illustrations
10 Illustrations, color
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 7 mm
Weight
191 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-78037-719-3 (9781780377193)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist. She edits the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears, and teaches for UEA/National Centre for Writing online. She has published five collections with Bloodaxe Books: The Double Life of Clocks (2002), The Dog in the Sky (2006), The Breakfast Machine (2010), Waiting for Bluebeard (2013), The Anatomical Venus (2019), and Constructing a Witch (2024), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. Fool's World, a collaborative Tarot with artist Tom de Freston (Gatehouse Press), won the 2016 Saboteur Best Collaborative Work award. A book of collage/mixed media poems, Hear What the Moon Told Me, was published KFS in 2017, a chapbook, Maps of the Abandoned City, by SurVision in 2019, and Wunderkammer: New and Selected Poems was published by MadHat in the US in 2023. The Anatomical Venus was shortlisted for the poetry category of the East Anglian Book Awards 2019. The cover of The Anatomical Venus, which features her own artwork, won the East Anglian Writers Book by the Cover Award (East Anglian Book Awards 2019). Her work has been translated into Ukrainian, Polish, Spanish, Croatian and Greek for Versopolis. She lives in Norwich.
Content
12 {By the slant of her tone}
13 The Waking
14 Some de?nitions 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 Haexan
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 Witch?nder 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 {?re as ?re}
93 Acknowledgements
95 About the collage/poems
13 The Waking
14 Some de?nitions 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 Haexan
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 Witch?nder 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 {?re as ?re}
93 Acknowledgements
95 About the collage/poems