The Poetry Witch Little Book of Spells

Product Information

The Witch” reading comprehension is perfect for learning in a classroom, or from home, the conversations that are sparked from interesting literature like this are inevitable no matter where your students are learning. Other Spooky Resources

Rebecca Tamás's WITCH ... is filled with a sort of propulsive demoniac vitality that powers you straight through it, cover to cover. [...] She is wonderfully evocative, appealingly grouchy and possesses ... visionary instincts. Certainly there is a feeling of joyful freedom to Ralphs’ poetry, as if liberated by the ability to shift language to fit her purpose and the voices of her characters. […] Reading Malkin is an immersive experience in which the reader’s intimacy with its characters is strengthened through the sharing of their unusual language.” – Suzannah Evans, The NorthFinch, Annie. The Ghost of Meter: Culture and Prosody in American Free Verse (University of Michigan Press, 1994, pp. 13-30 So begins this Victorian poem which offers us an ambiguous ‘witch’ as its (initial) speaker: she appears to be some sort of outcast, making a journey to visit a man, perhaps her beloved. Is she a depiction of the much-shunned Victorian ‘fallen woman’? She has the power to make the fire die in the grate, so she seems to possess some otherworldly power or aura. Coleridge was the great-grand-niece of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Finch's dramatic works of poetry include The Encyclopedia of Scotland (1983), originally performed in a libretto version with live music, as well as Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams (Red Hen Press, 2010) and Wolf Song, which premiered at Portland, Maine's Mayo Street Arts in 2012. Both plays were collaborative productions incorporating music, dance, puppets, and masks. Finch has also written and performed several works in a genre she calls "poetry ritual theater," combining multimedia poetry performance with interactive audience ritual; these including "Five Directions," premiered at Mayo Street Arts, Portland, Maine, in 2012, directed by Alzenira Quezada, and "Winter Solstice Dreams," premiered at Deepak Homebase, New York, in 2018, directed by Vera Beren. [31] [32] She died in 1907 from complications of appendicitis - leaving an unfinished novel, and hundreds of unfinished poems. The Sentimental Poetess in the World: Metaphor and Subjectivity in Lydia Sigourney's Nature Poetry, Legacy Vol. 5, No. 2 (Fall 1988), pp. 3-18

A magical space where Craft is honored as sacred, where Grammar dis-covers our Glamour, where skill and attention become the roots of art and action, and Webs of wise new Ways spin stronger. Poetry Witch Community, centered around Meter Magic Spiral, brings together women-identified & gender-nonconforming poets, poetry lovers, and spiritual seekers from around the world to practice poetry, scansion, and magic, weave webs of connection and empowerment, and explore the rhythmic languages of poetry and life so we can learn to craft our lives and words in more joyfully powerful ways. . . —Annie Finch (she/e/they) Over the past decade, Annie has woven her lifelong experience as poet, feminist spiritual seeker, scholar, and teacher into the uniquely original system of Poetry Witchery, a self-awareness practice of rhythmical writing that is equally useful to creative writers and seekers of self-transformation. Poetry Witchery uses rhythmical journaling based in Annie's deep experience with the healing powers of meters to connect participants with hidden aspects of our wills, minds, bodies, hearts, and spirits. This method of self-exploration has proven a useful tool for women in transition, yoga practitioners, visual artists, spiritual seekers, and many others as well as, of course, poets and other creative writers.In the preface to Spells: New and Selected Poems (2013), Finch writes, "Compiling this book has led me to appreciate how much I was inspired as a poet by coming of age during the feminist movement of the 1970s. Reading it has helped me understand the ways I struggled over the years to throw off the burden of misogyny on my spiritual, psychological, intellectual, political, and poetic identities. My themes are often female-centered . . . I am proud to define myself as a woman poet." [19]

An engagingly inventive pamphlet bringing the Pendle story to life through innovative language, which dazzles and enthrals. Poems attuned at once to the rhythms and limits of language. ‘ – Judges for the 2016 Michael Marks Awards Finch, Henry Leroy, Henry Leroy Finch Papers, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore College Among the Goddesses: An Epic Libretto in Seven Dreams Red Hen Press, 2010. [Winner, Sarasvati Award for Poetry, Association for the Study of Women and Mythology]. I felt drawn to them because I felt that they hadn’t quite been done justice in literature before. They have been ‘covered’, but somehow it didn’t seem angry enough. When Miller wrote The Crucible (1953), that was angry. But I felt there was nothing said about the Pendle Witches in the UK that was comparable.’– Camille Ralphs in conversation with Shoshana Kessler for the London Magazine A lively debate in your learning space is one of the best ways to encourage students to pay attention to the thoughts of others. Though they might be peers, your class of students will all have different opinions when it comes to divisive topics.

Looking for something different

A learning community where women and gender nonconforming people can learn the magic of meter . . . and participate in discussions and supportive community around poetry, meter, rhythm, scansion, and/or magic, ritual, self-transformation. In October 2016, anticipating the #MeToo movement, Finch became one of the first victims of sexual assault in the literary world to name writers, editors, and teachers who had sexually assaulted her during her career. [23] [24] A Poet's Craft: A Comprehensive Guide to Making and Shaping Your Poems. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012.