threatened , but we must be active in helping her , and ‘ be patient ’ to see who she might become .
The work to reclaim the witch is ongoing , but by contextualising her persecuted history alongside the struggles of modern women poets , this anthology marks a new progression in understanding the witch . Moving from Winter in ‘ The Witch House ’ to the fresh hope in ‘ How to Break a Curse ’, these poems each trace a journey of healing , of honouring the women lost to us through violent misogyny . Figures from 2020 , the year after Boodoo- Fortuné ’ s poem was published , reveal that 618,000 women are raped or sexually assaulted annually in England and Wales alone , so the need for new ways of resistance is clear . We must lose the cliché that the witch has become , finding new methods of expression through poetry that resist the limitations of historic terms , ones that have vilified women