Poetry Pause is the League of Canadian Poets’ daily poetry dispatch. Read an excerpt from “Twitchcraft” from Sandra Ridley’s collection Vixen, shortlisted for the League’s Pat Lowther Memorial Award.

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Excerpt from “Twitchcraft”

by Sandra Ridley

Unbidden, a spooklight, a nightmaker, he seems a nikin, a creature, a very soft creature—
his underness, an unkanny prank of second sight.

Yet a fake and a fetch. Riven with affliction, with ravenous crookedness.

Hush, hush.

And sudden, a hocus, a harum-scarum, we mark him as swithen.

So musky and sleek.

✢

As if he would terrify, and he is somewhat terrifying.

Thou seeist?

Yes, you saw.

✢

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Sandra Ridley is the author of three chapbooks and five books of poetry, the most recent of which is Vixen, published by Book*Hug Press in the fall of 2023. Ridley has been nominated for the Ontario Arts Council’s KM Hunter Artist Award for Mid-Career Writer and the Ottawa Arts Council’s Mid-Career Artist Award. She lives in Ottawa.

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