Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?

Thank you for reading these posts. I am looking back at some of the research I did for Constructing a Witch (Bloodaxe 2024), so search back on Substack if you’d like to see more.

An ekphrastic poem based on the always brilliant (if you are into folk horror) Robert Eggers’ directorial debut The VVitch, which is subtitled A New-England Folktale. Eggers, who grew up in New Hampshire wrote the film inspired by his childhood fascination with witches and the history of the English settlers there. I visited Salem, Massachusetts as research for this book and you feel the cruel history of the place. The Salem Witch Trials happened between February 1692 and May 1693. In that short furious time of mass hysteria, more than 200 people were accused, 30 found guilty and nineteen executed by hanging and at least five people died by torture.

I visited ‘Witch House’ which was the home of Judge Jonathan Corwin, one of the judges who presided over the trials. I was reminded of photographer Joel Sternfeld’s book On This Site in which he photographs parts of the US landscape which have been irreparably changed by violence. Not physically damaged, but our knowledge of the worst kind of deeds perpetrated by humans upon humans there, makes us see it differently; makes us feel it in a part of ourselves that language does not reach.

Eggers shot the film using only natural light and that of candles, to be authentically Jacobean. The dialogue is in Jacobean English to be true to the 1630s, when the Puritan settlers arrived in New England. I saw The VVitch when it first came out in 2015 and it stored itself in the magpie part of my brain that collects these things for future reference. I watched it three times before writing this poem during the pandemic. Once, straight through; second time with subtitles; the third with subtitles and the script. Reading the script helped me feel my way inside the dialogue which helped with the voice of the poem. I felt I was all set to climb inside the screen if I were to get any closer. I was affected too, by the eeriness of the pandemic streets without people. How animals become bolder and stepped out of the woods.

I do not want to give any spoilers if you haven’t seen The VVitch , but it simmers with the kind of tension and paranoia that I imagine happened in Salem. The fear, and the plummets into the darkest part of the imagination, was born from the perceived ‘otherness’ of the native people by the Puritan settlers. The native people were of course non-Christian and were described by Reverend Parris in his wild sermons as ‘devils’. In The VVitch, the part of the devil is played by the goat, Black Phillip. Thomasin, (Anya Taylor Joy) is the oldest of five children of the Puritan family.

The poem is in the voice of Black Phillip who also asks Wouldst thou like the taste of butter? A pretty dress? as part of the seduction. Thomasin has been blamed for all kinds of things, has a life of drudgery and only wants to live a little, so is all ears. As I say, I don’t want to plant any specific spoilers, but if you see the film, you will read the slant of my final stanza.

With this invitation, Thomasin has the the choice to shuck off the chains of a patriarchal society for pagan bliss; dancing with other women who have chosen to do the same. Black Phillip, I have been tempted a lot on Vinted recently, and have just the dress. When you’re done with Thomasin - where do I sign?!

(Please ‘like’ this post, if you do like it. I need the dopamine hit! )