Now write an acrostic poem about a potion. Perhaps it could be a rhyming spell. Think about what ingredients might go into your potion and the sounds it makes as it bubbles away. For example, does it fizz, spit, pop or bang? Think about what power your potion has. The Body of Poetry: Essays on Women, Form, and the Poetic Self. Poets on Poetry Series, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.

Certainly there is a feeling of joyful freedom to Ralphs’ poetry, as if liberated by the ability to shift language to fit her purpose and the voices of her characters. […] Reading Malkin is an immersive experience in which the reader’s intimacy with its characters is strengthened through the sharing of their unusual language.” – Suzannah Evans, The North Finch's dedication to writing in meter and her role as a scholar, editor, and critic of poetic form led some reviewers of her first books to classify her poetry within the movement known as New Formalism. Dictionary of Literary Biography named her "one of the central figures in contemporary American poetry" for her role in the reclamation of poetic form. [12] But reviewers soon noticed key differences between Finch's poetry and that of other new formalist poets. Henry Taylor, for example, claimed that Finch was not a typical new formalist because she did not focus on the realities of contemporary life, [13] and C.L. Rawlins emphasized the incantatory use of form in Eve, writing, "Finch is a poet in her bones . . . . What she proves in Eve is that rhyme-and-meter isn't just a formerly fashionable sort of bondage, but a bioacoustic key to memory and emotion." [14] Cindy Williams Gutierrez made a similar point in a review of a later book: “Finch is more shaman than formalist. She is keenly aware of the shape and sound of her poems. Whether in a chant, sonnet, ghazal, or even Billy Collins’ contrived paradelle, her skill is effortless: Form is merely the skin that allows her poems to breathe with ease.” [15]Finch started a blog called American Witch in 2010 [30] and has published several articles about earth-centered spirituality in The Huffington Post.

Lofty Dogmas: Poets on Poetics. With Maxine Kumin and Deborah Brown. University of Arkansas Press, 2005. Finch, Henry Leroy, Henry Leroy Finch Papers, Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore College In the preface to Spells: New and Selected Poems (2013), Finch writes, "Compiling this book has led me to appreciate how much I was inspired as a poet by coming of age during the feminist movement of the 1970s. Reading it has helped me understand the ways I struggled over the years to throw off the burden of misogyny on my spiritual, psychological, intellectual, political, and poetic identities. My themes are often female-centered . . . I am proud to define myself as a woman poet." [19] Betcher's crown of sonnets ​is an alchemical transmutation where his ordeal becomes a no-holds-barred odyssey that’s profound, funny, terrifying, and utterly dazzling. It seems rather feminist to me, at least more so than the witches I grew up with on television. “Updike wrote his witches as quite ambiguous figures, partly inspiring and partly villainous,” says professor Gibson. “But the 1987 film of the book presented them as much more glamorous, empowering women, part of a trend of young, sexy witches which continued throughout the 90s.”Tamás explores the figure of the witch and her relationship to gender and the state in a way that feels strikingly true to the political and personal malaises of twenty-first-century life. [...] Is it too cheesy to say that I’m spellbound? After New Formalism: Poets on Form, Narrative, and Tradition. Brownsville, OR: Story Line Press, 1999.

Over the past decade, Annie has woven her lifelong experience as poet, feminist spiritual seeker, scholar, and teacher into the uniquely original system of Poetry Witchery, a self-awareness practice of rhythmical writing that is equally useful to creative writers and seekers of self-transformation. Poetry Witchery uses rhythmical journaling based in Annie's deep experience with the healing powers of meters to connect participants with hidden aspects of our wills, minds, bodies, hearts, and spirits. This method of self-exploration has proven a useful tool for women in transition, yoga practitioners, visual artists, spiritual seekers, and many others as well as, of course, poets and other creative writers.With Samhain around the corner, here are four poems written by women to celebrate the witch. Read “The Witch” by Elizabeth Willis , “Witch-Wife” by Edna St. Vincent Millay , or “After He Called Her a Witch” by Susan Ludvigson if you wish to explore other poems. Eve. Story Line Press. 1997. [Finalist, National Poetry Series, Yale Series of Younger Poets, Brittingham Prize]. Reissued by Carnegie Mellon University Press, Classic Contemporaries Poetry Series, 2010. Landing Under Water (Stefania de Kenessey, Annie Finch)". Archived from the original on 2021-12-12 . Retrieved Oct 26, 2019– via www.youtube.com.