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.
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I have become one of those women / who goes about with a rattan carriage / salvaging women buried at crossroads or planted in the woods (WAKING)
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(@BloodaxeBooks, 24 October 2024, e-galley, 96 pages, ARC from the publisher via @edelweiss_squad)
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I'm a fan of the poet so was looking forward to reading Constructing a Witch. I really enjoyed this collection of poems. The poems are steeped in myth and folklore with woman as witches, troublemakers and sometimes victims at its core. I enjoyed every poem in this collection. The poems are raw, powerful, even visceral at times. Women have a raw deal at times and these poems explore this, unflinching. I especially enjoyed The Waking, Another Story, Night Hag, Remedy, Cackle and The Original Bad Girl. I'd recommend this.