Publisher's Synopsis
Hecate-like, A True & Just Record invites us to the three-way crossroads of poetry, feminist rhetorics, and early modern studies. Kate Bolton Bonnici weaves together archival materials from the English witch trials, 20th- century poets and philosophers, and her own family. With fury and care, haunted by absences, these poems-all also forms of experimental scholarship-interrogate, disrupt, and play.
Here, a multitude of stellar engagements delve spiritedly into what sonic and visual presences may be made of form, utterance, accusation, exchange, and page on the troubled edge of devilish societal inquisition ... . Bring on the prizes, this poetry is delicious! Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, author of Look at This Blue
Kate Bolton Bonnici's A True & Just Record movingly demonstrates poetry's capacity to forge critical and philosophical dialogue across time and space. ... The result is a daring and gorgeous poetic conversation. Melissa E. Sanchez, Donald T. Regan Professor, University of Pennsylvania
Witch as spell, curse, praise, eulogy, recovery, incantation, archival raid and save, library as cathedral and books as catechism - as befits poetry as anarchic art, in Kate Bolton Bonnici's hands the sacred is barbaric and the profane is holy. ... A wicked and wise achievement. Fred D'Aguiar, author of Letters to America and For the Unnamed
Bonnici's collection reveals that, far from being remote and unapproachable, centuries-old writings remain vibrantly relevant to our own historical moment. Kimberly Johnson, author of Fatal
