Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read an excerpt from “Twitchcraft” from Sandra Ridley’s collection Vixen , shortlisted for the League’s Pat Lowther Memorial Award.
Excerpt from “Twitchcraft”
by Sandra Ridley
Unbidden, a spooklight, a nightmaker, he seems a nikin, a creature, a very soft creature— his underness, an unkanny prank of second sight.
Yet a fake and a fetch. Riven with affliction, with ravenous crookedness.
Hush, hush.
And sudden, a hocus, a harum-scarum, we mark him as swithen.
So musky and sleek.
✢
As if he would terrify, and he is somewhat terrifying.
Thou seeist?
Yes, you saw.
✢
Sandra Ridley is the author of three chapbooks and five books of poetry, the most recent of which is Vixen , published by Book*Hug Press in the fall of 2023. Ridley has been nominated for the Ontario Arts Council’s KM Hunter Artist Award for Mid-Career Writer and the Ottawa Arts Council’s Mid-Career Artist Award. She lives in Ottawa.
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