Description

The thrilling story of the healers, artists and prodigies once persecuted as witches – from the three-time T.S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poetIn her thrilling fourth collection, Midden Witch, Fiona Benson enters the world of familiars, fables and hedge-magic and focuses on the persistent superstition – the fear and false knowledge – that was witchcraft. Telling tales of imagined transformations and spell-casting, 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 spell-book that witnesses the end-days of magic.

Paperback  

Publication: 1 May 2025, Vintage
ISBN: 9781787335240

Extent: 96 pages

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Midden Witch by Fiona Benson

    The thrilling story of the healers, artists and prodigies once persecuted as witches – from the three-time T.S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted... Read more

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        Description

        The thrilling story of the healers, artists and prodigies once persecuted as witches – from the three-time T.S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poetIn her thrilling fourth collection, Midden Witch, Fiona Benson enters the world of familiars, fables and hedge-magic and focuses on the persistent superstition – the fear and false knowledge – that was witchcraft. Telling tales of imagined transformations and spell-casting, 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 spell-book that witnesses the end-days of magic.

        Paperback  

        Publication: 1 May 2025, Vintage
        ISBN: 9781787335240

        Extent: 96 pages

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