Constructing a Witch - Couverture souple

Ivory, Helen

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1780377193 ISBN 13 : 9781780377193

Editeur : Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 2024

Synopsis

Poetry Book Society Recommendation

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 sixth collection Constructing a Witchfixes 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.

With ten collages by Helen Ivory

'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

'Constructing a Witch is spellbinding. [...] No word is wasted here as Ivory persuasively assembles the subversive history of the woman-as-witch. [...] This impressive collection tackles the fear and denigration of ageing women whilst advocating for a womanhood that is as "mutable as the day is long" ('More thoughts about the body').' – Jo Clement, PBS Selector, Poetry Book Society Winter Bulletin 2024

‘This already pulsating book is further energised by Ivory’s striking collages, which provide the ‘scratchy folk-art feel’ that a post-text note reveals she was aiming for, and are given both context and suggestiveness by scatterings of words, largely taken from sources such as fairytale books and vintage womens’s magazines. Overall, both she and Bloodaxe deserve the highest praise for a collection that is as meticulously produced as it is expertly and unflinchingly composed.’ – Nick Cooke, London Grip

‘Helen Ivory is a past-master of atmospherics and this collection drips with intrigue. Its power lies in setting the record straight and there’s a magic in her words which is hard to resist. As a result this encyclopaedic little handbook of witchcraft is likely to become a well-thumbed companion on every poetry bookshelf. It is no surprise that it is also one of this year’s Poetry Book Society’s recommendations.' – Hilary Hares, The High Window, on Constructing a Witch

‘Constructing a Witch is a blazingly angry book, but the word that came to me on a first reading was ‘playful’. This does not mean by any means that it is a frivolous or light-hearted one – the pace and tone keep the book from feeling like a manifesto or a rant but take nothing from its impact.’ – Elizabeth Rimmer, Glasgow Review of Books

'Ivory is also a visual artist and her illustrations with collaged poems, such as ‘{shortly after midnight}’ depicting an old woman in a red skirt, intersperse the poems and add to the rich atmosphere and enjoyment of this excellent collection.'– Mary Mulholland, The Alchemy Spoon, on Constructing a Witch

'Constructing a Witch is a thorough meditation on the demonization of women, or at least their subjugation, even in western culture, and the peculiarities of the female body – the onset of menses, the effects of menopause – that are so often taboo subjects, a fact which contributes to the “othering” of women. [...] Ivory’s research is impressive, impeccable. [...] Constructing a Witch is witty, charming, informative, and a cri de Coeur.' – Charles Rammelkamp, The Lake

'Witches from Endor to Pendle and Salem in their various manifestations –‘I am the maid ripe for corruption or the long-dugged ruined hag’ – inhabit this collection, poems interspersed with collages which give it, in places, the air of a grimoire. [...] Atmospheric poetry well worth reading in its own right, this could also inform discussions on history, superstition and women’s studies.' – Frank Startup, The School Librarian, on Constructing a Witch

'Constructing a Witch, despite its plethora of historical inspiration, is anything but archaic. Rather, it surpasses the limits of space and time into a kind of transcendent purgatory that welcomes the shift of form and voice the poems demand, and lets it run into a haunting but harmonised spell with Ivory’s own darkly enchanting voice at the fore.' – Poppy Kleiser, PN Review

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

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) and The Anatomical Venus (2019), with a sixth, Constructing a Witch, a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, out in 2024. 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. In 2024 she received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors, an award recognising the achievement and distinction of individual poets. She lives in Norwich.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
• Date d'édition: 2024
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1780377193
• ISBN 13: 9781780377193
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 96
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible