A STORY OF WITCHERY

by Jennifer Calkins

Poetry. Fantasy, fear, and freedom all play parts in A STORY OF WITCHERY, a book-length narrative poem by Jennifer Calkins, and illustrated by Sarah Lane. Here we meet Emily, our "small and weedy" protagonist, an orphan complicit (perhaps) in her own abandonment, and who is caught up, as poet Amy Gerstler writes in her Introduction, in a story "entwined with science facts and twisted clinical fictions." In language rolling and tripping with spare precision, Calkins makes a modern pilgrim progress into the imagination and the dark world of medicine. Rich and haunting images create an seemingly familiar environment which, like the internal landscape of the protagonist, dissolves only to reform, until finally resolving into a healed whole.

Genres: Poetry, Fantasy, Disability

167 pages, Paperback

First published January 31, 2006

Reviews

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading A Story of Witchery was like walking into a Grimm Fairy Tale directed by David Lynch.

But better than Lynch, Jennifer Calkins brings young Emily’s journey and world – every twisted bit of it – into existence exquisitely. I could read this book a hundred times and still discover something new!

[Julia · Rating 5 out of 5]

The odd, ornate illustrations lend their own sort of fine witchery.

[anna marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

im not sure!!! this is really hard to talk about + rate??!?? also i felt like in SOME way it was quite contrived? like did it need to be written in the way it did? idk ??!?!? but interesting and grotesque/scary/a little triggering with all the body horror and the unreality. i think it was really interesting tho and if u read it as a critique of ableism/ppls fear of deformity, difference, disability, bodies etc and that is cool. plus there are mermaids. but not enough witches tbqf

[Rowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

An opening epic, of deformity and femininity, of fairy tales estranged from themselves, alluded and accreted. Something of Autobiography of Red. Something of The Descent of Alette. Everything wonderful.