Witch Doctrine: Order Info, Reviews, and Thanks
Ordering Info
Hello, friends! If you’re looking to order Witch Doctrine, please do so directly from the press here! Support the wonderful work University of Akron Press does.
Reviews:
Mary Ozbolt at The Bind: “Annah Browning’s Witch Doctrine as Spiritual Handbook”: “Sink your teeth into its side, search for another solar system, graze your teeth against its bones, let yourself lift beyond your territory, only to come shuddering back to familiar ground with a new layer in your mind’s kaleidoscope. Witch Doctrine by Annah Browning is full of individualistic, introspective modesty and harmony with the natural world…..Some poems draw me down into the earth, while others fling me across vast spaces. All of Browning’s poems speak of vulnerability, individuality, and the importance of communion with and preservation of what is natural. There is a sacredness and intimacy surrounding the topic of death within Witch Doctrine, which interrogates the afterlife using deep compassion and emotional intelligence. While the poems travel the wilderness of the intellect, the soul, and the mind, they stay true to a specific set of tenants and consistent form, which makes this collection ideal to consult as a creative dogmatic reference book. At its core, it reinforces respect for worlds and beings other than the self, while also encouraging openness and curiosity. It is beautifully responsible as a handbook of poems.”
Jessica Drake-Thomas at This Week I Read: “I love the world that these poems inhabit. It’s somewhere in the liminal space between the natural world and the paranormal–the space between life and death, where all things are possible. More than that, the voice in these poems is phenomenal. The speaker is wise and mysterious, in the way that witches and ghosts are. There’s a knowledge in Witch Doctrine that is intriguing, intimating this knowledge through lists, spells, and letters. The speaker is connected to the world that she inhabits in a way that allows her to thrive.”
"Bound in this debut lies a collection of haunts and ghosts in the narrative written from a supernatural realm deep in the forest of Annah Browning's gifted mind. Witch Doctrine goes beyond the surface world and brings to life all the beings waiting to be awakened." - Tim Heerdink, author of Razed Monuments
“A stunning debut collection, with echoes of Plath and Sexton, Witch Doctrine is destined to become a classic. Browning solidifies a spot in both the feminist canon, and the world of letters, displaying her technical prowess in three different sections, one each dedicated to the witch, the medium, and the ghost. Her diction is as bewitching as the subject matter, delivered with shivering precision. Take these lines from "Suicide Ghost," for instance: "No one thinks // they're going to become / a stray leather purse, an easily // mistakable grocery bag, / damp and flattened // in the outer lots where, / I have heard it said, // the women circle." This is a poetry book for poets, and for true lovers of poetry, but it is also for the witch in all of us (so often both, yes? One could argue poets are witches by default, and vice versa). I swooned over such pieces as "Medium on the Sleeping Arrangements of the Dead," "Ghost as Housekeeper," "Ghost in a Dessert Dish," and so many others, that I will be revisiting this collection in the future. Kudos to Annah Browning, on a fabulous addition to poetry.”— Lauren Tivey, author of Moroccan Holiday
Thanks
Spring 2020 was a wild time to have a first book of poems appear. All of the readings and events I had planned for my book’s arrival were scuppered. While the pandemic was raging that summer, I moved away from Chicago to begin a new life at Blackburn College as a Professor of English, teaching creative writing, literature, and composition under the very strange circumstances we’ve been living through. In a way, Witch Doctrine’s publication didn’t feel quite real when it happened; there was little time or bandwidth to consider it too much.
All of this is just to say, very belatedly— thank you, kind strangers, for reading my book, with special thanks to those of you who wrote about it so thoughtfully. It means the world to me. I’m writing you another book as we speak.
