The thrilling story of the healers, artists and prodigies once persecuted as witches from the threetime T.S. Eliot Prizeshortlisted poetPOETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICEIn her thrilling fourth collection, Midden Witch, Fiona Benson enters the world of familiars, fables and hedgemagic and focuses on the persistent superstition the fear and false knowledge that was witchcraft.Telling tales of imagined transformations and spellcasting, these poems present a litany of artists, dreamers and outcasts and a study of their ostracisation. The poet looks at how gifted, sometimes troubled, individuals generally healers, artists, prodigies and almost always women became scapegoats, victims of societal paranoia and persecution, and were hounded for centuries, often to a gratuitously violent public execution.In Midden Witch, these women speak back to us with dark humour, insight and real herbal knowledge. Reckoning with middle age, marginalisation, perimenopause and a steady, unstoppable vanishing, this troubled codex of remedies, spells and stories speaks to human fear in the face of the unknown, and a drive to protect our loved ones that transcends all rational thought. At play in the language of archival accounts of witchcraft, this is a dark, eclectic spellbook that witnesses the enddays of magic.Benson is one of the finest English poets writing today Blake MorrisonNo one writes the way Fiona Benson does. No one is as raging, as fearless Daisy JohnsonA new collection of Bensons wise...

Binding: Paperback;80 pages; Publisher: TBS-Penguin Random House Wholesale; Classification: DC; Weight: 236 g; Dimensions: 198 x 130 x 10

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