{"product_id":"benson-fiona-midden-witch-9781787335240","title":"Midden Witch","description":"The thrilling story of the healers, artists and prodigies once persecuted as witches - from the three-time T.S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted poet 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 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.","brand":"Vintage Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53729462387030,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/www.momoxbooks.com\/products\/benson-fiona-midden-witch-9781787335240","provider":"momoxbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}