Helen Ivory reviews & radio for Constructing a Witch
Helen Ivory’s sixth collection Constructing a Witch, published October 2024, 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. The collection includes ten collages by Helen Ivory. Scroll down to watch a video of Helen's joint online reading and discussion launch event with Bloodaxe.
Constructing a Witch is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Winter 2024. It follows Helen's 2019 collection The Anatomical Venus, which examines how women have been portrayed as ‘other’; as witches; as hysterics with wandering wombs and as beautiful corpses cast in wax, or on mortuary slabs in TV box sets.
Helen Ivory is a poet and visual artist. She edits the webzine Ink Sweat and Tears, and teaches for UEA/National Centre for Writing online. She has published five collections with Bloodaxe Books, with a sixth, Constructing a Witch, published in October 2024. Her fifth collection The Anatomical Venus was shortlisted for the poetry category of the East Anglian Book Awards 2019. The cover of The Anatomical Venus, which features her own artwork, won the East Anglian Writers Book by the Cover Award (East Anglian Book Awards 2019). Her work has been translated into Ukrainian, Polish, Spanish, Croatian and Greek for Versopolis. Her US retrospective, Wunderkammer: New and Selected Poems, was published by MadHat in the US in 2023. In June 2024 she won a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors, an award recognising the achievement and distinction of individual poets. She lives in Norwich.
'Helen Ivory, a highly individualistic poet and visual artist, conjures a world that is both magical and sharply real. As in freshly conceived fairy tales, everything is transmutable. She expresses the intrinsic strangenesses of life, and makes a brilliant contribution to female empowerment through poems that are disturbing, agile, and visually telling.' – Moniza Alvi, Cholmondeley Award co-judge
ONLINE REVIEW COVERAGE
Glasgow Review of Books, online 28 November 2024
An excellent in-depth review of Helen Ivory’s sixth collection Constructing a Witch went online in Glasgow Review of Books on 28 November 2024.
‘Constructing a Witch is a blazingly angry book, but the word that came to me on a first reading was ‘playful’. This does not mean by any means that it is a frivolous or light-hearted one – the pace and tone keep the book from feeling like a manifesto or a rant but take nothing from its impact.’ – Elizabeth Rimmer, Glasgow Review of Books
https://glasgowreviewofbooks.com/2024/11/28/a-woman-like-that-is-not-a-woman-quite-on-constructing-a-witch-by-helen-ivory/
The High Window, Winter 2024, online 27 November 2024
Constructing a Witch was given an excellent review online in the Winter 2024 issue of The High Window.
‘Helen Ivory is a past-master of atmospherics and this collection drips with intrigue. Its power lies in setting the record straight and there’s a magic in her words which is hard to resist. As a result this encyclopaedic little handbook of witchcraft is likely to become a well-thumbed companion on every poetry bookshelf. It is no surprise that it is also one of this year’s Poetry Book Society’s recommendations.' – Hilary Hares, The High Window
Read the full review here.
RADIO READING BY HELEN IVORY
The Poetry Place with Deborah Harvey & Helen Ivory #59, West Wilts Radio, Sunday 24 November 2024, 3pm
Helen Ivory was one of the two guest poets invited to read their poetry on The Poetry Place on 24 November. Host Dawn Gorman introduced both poets.
Helen read and introduced ten poems from her sixth collection Constructing a Witch. The poems were: ‘The Waking’, ‘Some definitions of Witch’, ‘Thus men forgot that All deities reside in the human breast’, ‘All about the hair’, ‘The Devil’s Mark’, ‘Margaret Johnson’, ‘Tick-Tock’, ‘The Menstruous Woman’, ‘The Change’ and ’34 Symptoms of the Menopause’.
Introduction, then Helen features from 30:24.
https://westwiltsradio.com/shows/the-poetry-place/
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ONLINE LAUNCH READING
Bloodaxe online launch reading by Dzifa Benson, Nia Davies and Helen Ivory - Monday 21 October 2024
Bloodaxe hosted this free launch reading by Dzifa Benson, Nia Davies and Helen Ivory, celebrating the publication of our October 2024 titles. All three poets will be read live and discussed their work with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley. Watch the recording below. Helen read last in each set.
[28 November 2024]
