Hag Dances, Susan Wismer
At Bay Press, 2025
Susan Wismer’s Hag Dances is firmly fastened in earth, stretching its roots back to ancient things that speak of wisdom that’s learned from being close to the natural world. Each poem is like “the new-cracked egg of a just-born day.” Wismer’s series of sonnets, aptly titled “A Crown for the Kitchen,” conjures a redheaded spatula, a brown betty teapot, a saucepan, a pine table, a kitchen window, a corn broom, and a chipped cup. The kitchen becomes a centre point for conversation, the sharing of stories between generations of women, and the sacred place where magic enters the equation. Crone wisdom is present in this crown of sonnets and artfully weaves itself through the other poems in Hag Dances.
There’s witchy wisdom here as Wismer highlights the power of the natural world. Nothing is without spirit or soul. Everything—from weather and seasonal changes, to trees, rocks, birds, and animals—has a sacred purpose. In “Night Vision,” she writes of autumn leaves that “crumble, whisper/under three stars, white bands of cloud” and of trees whose “hands reach naked/through moon’s falling light//their prayers constant, implacable, rising.” In “Invocation,” the speaker’s voice is that of a wise woman who is depicted in the first stanza as a blurry watercolour that is reminiscent of the mythic Macbeth witches: “Black shawl scry mutter/stone spellbag herbs potions/boil iron cauldron,” but then changes point of view in the second stanza: “I am bent-fired on broomstick/in cackling flight/through obsidian nights.” In the final two stanzas, written in italics, a spell blooms so that the crone voice calls out, entreating Hecate to listen: “Hear me beat, beat away/at the imperilled heart/of the Anthropocene.” That speaker’s voice embodies the overall tone and theme of the book in its awareness of the importance of the natural world, and the rhythms of life—including the seasons of living, aging, and dying. This poem’s spell works at wishing away the negativity of the Anthropocene, reminding readers that there is always hope, even on the darkest days.
History speaks in Hag Dances, in poems like “Dresden Cup,” which traces the provenance of three china cups and saucers that initially sit by the side of a war-torn Polish road in 1943—"spare beauties of smooth rounded shape/some hesitant hand/brushed paint over porcelain” but are carried by a woman “all through that war/scalpel and morphine/her doctor-hands bloodied” to England in 1945, and then used again in Canada in 2025. Artifacts of humanity pass through times of war and peace, telling stories of family history through a matrilineal line. In “Spirits,” Wismer reflects on her “stubborn Scottish pride” when she speaks of “ancestors made of madness” who were evicted by the Highland Clearances. Ghosts, they “appear in bagpipes, old rubber boots,/dance on worn kitchen floors” as “language lilts/shadows” and “ghost Gaelic traces lift” off a “flat English tongue.” In the various Celtic traditions, ancestors are as real as living people, so it makes sense that Wismer considers how time works in a lifetime, and through centuries. The veils or borders that exist between worlds and dimensions, but also between the lines that mark out generations of relatives, are thin.
The notion of pilgrimage is present in the collection, with references to travel and to the Camino de Santiago, and mention of a world that is “already shattered/and still breaking.” Whether focused on the threat that exists to a single woman walking on dark city streets in “Walk Home,” or on the fawn that lies hurt on the road in “North of Verona, Canoe Lake Road,” with the man who “has fawn fur on his hands” when he returns from moving it to temporary safety before it dies, Wismer creates the extended metaphor of life as a pilgrimage, where the worth is in the journey, not necessarily in the destination.
Hageography, the last section in Hag Dances, plays with the meaning behind the word “hagiography,” which may refer to a biography that puts a person in a very flattering light, or may also refer to the study of saints or venerated people. In this case, the pun comes in on the image and symbol of what a hag stereotypically represents. Wismer writes of crones who are wise women, not women who have been demeaned by western society and culture. These are not crones who are feared, but oracles who offer wisdom to those who seek them out.
The figure of a bain sidhe (banshee) shows up in the poem “At the Crossroads,” where her image is described beautifully as being “cloaked in pale folds/of dark winter’s coming/rock water sky” and that her arrival is shown as a “dance to the glisten of sleet/frozen earth/keen skirl of hawk cries.” Rather than being portrayed as a terrifying being who carries the dying one off in her arms, as the banshee is usually depicted, this portrayal links her power and beauty to the spirit of the land, weather, and seasonal shifts. Hags, crones, witches, or wise women—no matter what you call them—honour the passage of time and growth. In “A Starker Form of Art,” the speaker writes of learning to “love angles, sharp elbows,/Straighter lines in the shapes of my age” and notes that they are “alive in the flesh of my own slow/dissolving, blurred lines through/my eveningtime eyes.” The body of the speaker becomes the “starker form of art” as “it dances a gradual/descent towards Earth.” Aging is no longer to be feared, but rather seen as a proof of wisdom that’s been gathered over time.
Hag Dances is Susan Wismer’s joyous poetic spell of celebration, of noticing how words and poems become magical incantations that remind readers of how time shifts and moves, how the natural world offers us solace through difficult times, and how humans are only here for a short while. The wisdom isn’t far from the noticing and mindfulness, and the peace is still possible in the times of war. The poems in this collection remind this reviewer of Sharon Blackie’s Hagitude or The Enchanted Life, books that recall ancient mythical stories that speak to where women fit into the natural and elemental worlds of fire, earth, sky, and water. Hag Dances speaks to women as they gain knowledge and wisdom as they age—offering something to share with those who come afterwards.
Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her most recent books include The Pollination Field (Turnstone, 2025) and The Donoghue Girl (Latitude 46, 2024). She is the Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada (TWUC) and recently won first place for her CNF essay, "What You Carry," in The Ampersand Review's 2024 essay contest. Kim may be reached via her author website.
