This event is FREE but booking is essential.
Join Ruth Stacey as she hosts a conversation with poet Jenny Hope and academic Dr Sharon Young about the figure of the witch in literature, and how the witch inspires their research and writing. Recent graduates of the University of Worcester, Kashala Abrahams and James O’Toole, will read and discuss their writing inspired by witches and witchcraft. The evening will be concluded by a poetry reading by Jenny Hope.
Jenny Hope is a writer, poet, workshop facilitator and presenter. She lives on a hill in wildish-Worcestershire just on the edge of Herefordshire – border country. Her poems explore both the internal and external landscapes with nature as the defining force. Life within the shadows and drawing on that which we keep hidden from plain sight. These are poems of nature’s darker self, of liminal places and times where inner and outer worlds meet, sometimes co-existing, sometimes not. These are poems of imagery, metaphor, dark sensuality and of otherworldly connections with the natural world. Poetry that calls upon us to listen to that which is unsaid.
Dr Sharon Young is a senior lecturer in English Literature at the University of Worcester. Her research primarily focuses on women’s writing of the early modern period and its role in their participation in the public sphere broadly defined. Her current research project focuses on early modern understanding of women's bodies and their reproductive role and the role this played in casting women as witches or monstrous entities. Further teaching and research interests include digital editing, the history of the book and women’s participation in the critical debates of the eighteenth century.