
Sick Witch
Poetry, Mental Health
- Price
- $17.95
“I’m going to get you, my pretty!” The enigmatic Sick Witch lures the narrator on a metaphoric/literal vision quest through the hallucinatory terrain of undiagnosed and undiagnosable medical disorders in poems that playfully explore connections between physical and mental illness.
Compelling “fever dreams” tackle disorders, from allergy to somnambulism, from retinal detachment to schizophrenia, from avian flu to ALS, beyond the insular country of the sickbed. Allusion becomes illusion in the blink of an eye, both in the sharp images and also with insight, revelation, confusion and fear, with a supposed control that advances then recedes then does it again and again. Here are tales both grim and Grimm, complemented by “lessons” from other patients, and leavened through a series of Letters to an Insurance Adjuster, who may or may not be a good wizard. Disquieting images from myth and pop culture compel the reader to join in the dance down the yellow brick road. X may mark the spot, but is it malignant? Or does it lead to Health?
Reviews
“Hurdle’s vision is sweeping, nay ‘soaring’ in its use of familiar literary and Hollywood icons and narratives to bridge the narrator’s rich, inner landscape while conveying the daily experience of a body ill-adapted to our environment.” —Moira MacDougall, Poetry Editor for The Literary Review of Canada
Book Details
Pub Date: April 2019
Trade Paperback
122 Pages
Print ISBN 9781553806264
E-book ISBN 9781553806271
PDF ISBN 9781553806288
6” x 9”
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