Constructing a Witch

Helen Ivory

• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781780377193
• eBook ISBN: 9781780377209
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• {By the slant of her tone}
• The Waking
• Some definitions of Witch
• The lust of the goat is the bounty of God
• Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast
• Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?
• Another Story
• We are the weirdos mister
• {daughters of air}
• The Answer
• Only Bad Witches Are Ugly
• The Woman of Endor to Saul
• Night Hag
• One Such Tale
• Scry
• Day’s Conversation with Night
• More thoughts about the dark
• The Antihousewife
• Dairying
• {gnats, swarm upon swarm}
• Remedy
• How to Construct an Ale Witch
• New Rules for the Disenchanted Land
• Cackle
• The Gift
• Fetish to Counteract Witchcraft
• {and thus the riddle has been read}
• The Moon’s Halo
• Protection Ink
• At the Witchcraft Museum
• Hexentanz
• Häxan
• The Original Bad Girl
• To a Painter
• All about the hair
• More thoughts about the body
• {a cluster of pretty berries}
• Margaret Johnson
• Elizabeth Tibbots
• Lilias Adie (c. 1640-1704)
• Walking the Witch
• The Devil’s Mark
• More thoughts about the Witch Finder
• {Shall the boys come and hang, burn or roast you?}
• Pendle Tourist
• Bridget Bishop
• The Good People of Salem
• Samuel Parris Dreams of Dogs
• The Makings
• Witchfinder Tour
• Mistley Pond Washes its Hands
• {familiar spirits]
• More thoughts about the moon
• Prick
• Resistance Spells
• {The church-bells began to ring}
• ‘Grandmother Moorhead’s Aromatic Kitchen’
• The Watcher
• The Happenings
• Hang the Moon
• The Menstruous Woman
• Brain Fog
• The Change
• ‘Invidia’ (‘Envy’)
• {shortly after midnight}
• Tick-Tock
• Thirteen Million
• This whole thing was nearly never a thing
• 34 Symptoms of the Menopause
• Votive
• ‘The Spirit of the Storm’
• {fire as fire}
• Acknowledgements
• About the Collage/Poems