Rebecca Tamas was born in London and currently lives in York, where she lectures at York St John University. Rebecca is the editor, with Sarah Shin, of the anthology Spells: Occult Poetry for the 21st Century (Ignota Press, 2018). She has published three pamphlets of poetry: The Ophelia Letters (Salt, 2013), Savage (Clinic, 2017) and Tiger (Bad Betty Press, 2018). WITCH is her first full-length collection.
'My heart pounded as I read WITCH; I felt as if Tamas's words were burning the page as I read. WITCH is sexy, frightening, and cerebral at once; full of the weight of history, while also being witty, contemporary, and playful. What Tamas does with language, and with the legacy of the witch, is thrillingly strange. She is the real deal.' -Katherine Angel; 'Emerging from the gloom, in tar, grit and blood, WITCH is an occult trip, a miasmic universe without stricture. A fissure through the lyric mode, the poems ooze up through the cracks like lava. Demons, vomit, eggs, agony; I want to live inside this book.' -Rachael Allen; 'Sharp-witted, trenchant and bold, Rebecca Tamas' WITCH constellates the characteristics of instinctual life by pulling sexuality into the realm of the archetypal, where we are challenged to face witch qualities within our own unconscious. By targeting the body, these stunning poems awaken primordial parts of our being, releasing energy that had been mobilized towards repression, so that we become free to taste the radical eroticism of volcanic God-speaking feelings. These spells and hexes reanimate historical female silence, demanding that we listen to all that had been kept latent for so long. Can we accept the witch - the female within ourselves - as she is, without trying to make her conform to our expectations? To do so, we would have to adjust our thinking instead of forcing adjustment in the Other-we would have to change ourselves. WITCH leads the way.' -Nuar Alsadir; 'Rebecca Tamas' WITCH is the book of poems we need in 2019. Part poetry book, part questionnaire, and part spell book, WITCH is immediate and vibrant, talking directly to us with its eyes on us from the first page and relentlessly until the end. Like a vengeful hornet, the persona in these pages waits for us as we swim idly by in the lake until we come up for air so that it can sting us again. Like a demon, the persona hides under the table until we lift up the tablecloth and see its shining eyes. This is a book that stays with you, long after you are done reading it. WITCH makes us question what or who we pray to, what we write poems for, and how we are living and if this is really the right way. More than anything, WITCH asks to reconsider our relationship to humanity and how we use the terms good or evil to explain any universal human action. In the midst of gorgeous and horrific imagery, which cuts us like glass, it tells us to be kind to each other. WITCH is such a wise book. It tells us what we need to hear. ' - Dorothea Lasky.
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