Description

With the narrative pull of a novel and the vibrancy of a play for voices, Witch offers a thrilling portrait of a Suffolk village in the throes of the witchcraft hunts of the mid-seventeenth century. The poems in this collection are dark spells, compact and moving: seven sections, each of seven poems, each of seven couplets. Taken altogether, Witch is a damning parable that chimes with the terror and anxieties of our own haunted age.

"As colourfully dramatic in its way as The Crucible... an unsettling and original masterpiece."
Bernard O'Donoghue

"A performer with great panache and stylistic verve."
Nicholas Murray

"Fascinating and deeply unsettling"
Wales Arts Review

Responses to Suit of Lights (2009):

"Astonishing, knock-you-backwards work... startlingly different."
Jane Holland

"His lines startle with freshness and animation... refined, but never squeamish... outstanding."
Alison Brackenbury

"A succession of well-observed, witty, sparely written poems, satisfyingly visceral, and unsentimental."
Alice Kavounas, Poetry Review

Damian Walford Davies was born in Aberystwyth in 1971. His two previous poetry collections are Whiteout (Parthian, 2006) and Suit of Lights (Seren, 2009), a Wales Literature Exchange Bookshelf Choice. He is Head of the Department of English and Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University.