The thrilling story of the healers, artists and prodigies once persecuted as witches – from the three-time T.S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE In 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
