We're Doing Witchcraft

by E. Kristin Anderson

Witchcraft is a spell weaving together the smile, heat, the body, rule-breaking, and the craft of erasure without apology. Inside these pages you’ll find 90s nostalgia, pop culture, rhythm—it’s an examination, a revisiting, a potion stirred of teenage moments, the spark of assertion, fire on the beach, a stray lipstick, a smudge of ash stoppered with a secret at the witching hour.

Genres: Poetry

32 pages, Handmade Chapbook

First published October 1, 2016

About the author

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet and glitter enthusiast living mostly at a Starbucks somewhere in Austin, Texas. A Connecticut College graduate with a B.A. in classics, Kristin’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Kristin co-edited the award-winning DEAR TEEN ME anthology and is the editor of the literary anthology COME AS YOU ARE, an anthology of writing on 90’s pop culture (Anomalous Press). Kristin’s poetry and flash fiction have appeared in The Texas Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Puerto del Sol, The Pinch, Barrelhouse Online, Cotton Xenomorph and FreezeRay Poetry and she has work forthcoming in Birdfeast, Entropy, and Harpur Palate. Kristin is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including A GUIDE FOR THE PRACTICAL ABDUCTEE (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), PRAY, PRAY, PRAY: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press, 2015), FIRE IN THE SKY (Grey Book Press, 2016), SHE WITNESSES (dancing girl press, 2016), WE’RE DOING WITCHCRAFT (Hermeneutic Chaos Press, 2016), 17 SEVENTEEN XVII (Grey Book Press, 2017) and BEHIND, ALL YOU’VE GOT (Semiperfect Press). She hand-wrote her first trunk book at sixteen. It was about the band Hanson and may or may not still be in a notebook in her parents’ garage. Kristin is a poetry reader at Cotton Xenomorph and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked the night shift at The New Yorker. She blogs at EKristinAnderson.com and tweets at @ek_anderson.

Reviews

[Courtney LeBlanc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A chapbook of poems about pop culture, survival, identity, and a few erasure poems thrown in as well.

from Bruce Wayne's Girlfriend: "I woke up / wondering why / I'd move in with Batman, / who kept so many secrets, / who seemed more in love / with that one / villain / than he could ever be with me."

from After the ants came: "I am not that pounding piano, / the low notes that rattle your teeth. // When the fever hits, you wreck dizzy, slam / the chords like demons, kill one finger after another."

from Because I can be Adam if you believe you have Eden: "If you are Eve, then I am shame. I am shoulders / and hips and mascara and dresscode violations."