Description
An image-text collaboration by Elizabeth Willis and Nancy Bowen.
SPECTRAL EVIDENCE: THE WITCH BOOK is the result of a meeting between Elizabeth Willis, descendent of one of the convicted and executed "witches" of the Salem witch trials, and Nancy Bowen, descendent of Samuel Sewall, a prominent judge in the trials. SPECTRAL EVIDENCE pairs each of the 46 stanzas of Willis's "The Witch Poem" with a drawing or collage by Bowen, whose iconographic style moves deftly between humor and seriousness, echoing the affective range of Willis's poem: "With a glance, she will make rancid the fresh butter of her righteous neighbor." / "A witch may cry out sharply at the sight of a known criminal dying of thirst." The book includes a conversational afterword by the authors and editor exploring the connections between this project, with its roots in the history of the Salem witch trials, and the broader interwoven contexts of capitalist and colonial power structures, current U.S. politics, heteropatriarchy, and state violence, as well as cultural practices of resistance and repair.
Poetry. Hybrid. Art. Women's Studies.
Author Bio
Elizabeth Willis's most recent book Alive: New and Selected Poems (New York Review Books, 2015) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her other books of poetry include Address (Wesleyan University Press, 2012); Meteoric Flowers (Wesleyan University Press, 2007); Turneresque (Burning Deck, 2003); The Human Abstract (Penguin, 1995); and Second Law (Avenue B, 1992). She teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Author City: IOWA CITY, IA USA
Elizabeth Willis's most recent book Alive: New and Selected Poems (New York Review Books, 2015) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Her other books of poetry include Address (Wesleyan University Press, 2012); Meteoric Flowers (Wesleyan University Press, 2007); Turneresque (Burning Deck, 2003); The Human Abstract (Penguin, 1995); and Second Law (Avenue B, 1992). She teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.
Author City: BROOKLYN, NY USA