Hag Dances by Susan Wismer

I first came across Susan Wismer’s poems through Pinhole Poetry in the summer of 2024, and her poem “On Distance” which included the memorable image that at the speed of walking the earth, “gunpowder turned back to grapevines.” With the simple grace of her poems I expected she was several books in.

Hag Dances by Susan Wismer is in fact a debut collection divided into five discrete sections of poems: “Hand Shadows”, “One Blue Thread”, “A Crown for the Kitchen”, “Camino”, and “Hageography” (a play on “hagiography”).

Although we live as the crow flies 400 km or so apart in different provinces, her poems start with earth and ruffed grouse, touchstones of my days as well. The first poem ends, “Wonder and desire hold me here, and of course/ gravity.”

It’s a promising entry point, humbleness, grounded images and humour.

I enjoy that when I start her poem I can’t predict where it will get to or by what path. There are no end-emphasis paper cut endings. Most poems have many endings so I often turn a page with surprise that there’s more and more, like a corridor one goes through many closures. It exemplifies life, survival of disaster after disaster but one endures. I appreciate how she sees specifics, not “sky” or “clouds” but “nimbus clouds”, not “green ground” but “dame’s rocket, chickweed”.

There’s an ampleness, perhaps seen sharpest in lists, as if she were a Walt Whitman, but with a tempered ego. The world is viewed from self of course but is inclusive of all loved ones, not self as the crown but a flatter hierarchy of interweaving abundances and history.

There is a lot to unpack and reflect on at irregular intervals such as “fatherly as my own father never was” and “Beloved, you are my place of return. The collection is littered with phrases like these, like maple keys. I could make a long list of look, look.

There’s a haiku quality to her observations, and symmetry of sound, with profound weight, such as in “Sanctuary”, “Regardless, unasked/the wood fern/uncurls”. It recalls the coming to peace despite of Desiderata, “no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. /Therefore be at peace with God, /whatever you conceive Him to be.” We must move forward in hope as well as anything else “I’ll pray to stop the unstoppable/peg pit clothes in the wind while it rains//Shout out Please don’t die, and shout out again”.

“Coming Home” is particularly moving about a loved one getting a health reprieve. It captures that sense of gratitude and life-fragility that we can too soon lose as bustle resumes.

One short section, “A Crown for the Kitchen” is not in my wheelhouse, tributes to kitchen objects.

There’s not rapid-fire clever repartee, but acknowledgement of still here, blue-veined hands and all. The poet is sure of her own value; “I’m fine/after all/without you”. In time, despite wishes, we get set in our ways, or least pinned by ghosts of mother’s habits, such as explored in “Don’t Know”. That too can be something to know rather than rage against.

In an interview of Wismer at Pinhole Poetry , she describes herself as an edge-walker and as a queer polyamorous witch in the third stage of life. Life lived in itself isn’t enough to be dextrous with language. It depends on how the inner life years were spent.

Third stage of life one can grant oneself more time for understanding. You grasp how much of the world there is that you have to forfeit because time is limited. Whatever has happened or will happen we learn to value the “chipped cup” because it is at least ours. Again there’s a sense of wabi-sabi.

Whether you buy the book or not, take this consideration away from it in “Perfection”: “Are we too careful with courage/with joy?”

SUSAN WISMER (she/her) is a queer poet who is grateful to live on Treaty 18 territory at the southern shore of Manidoo-zaagai’gan (Georgian Bay) in Ontario, Canada with two human partners and a very large dog. Recent work has been published in These Small Hours (ed. Lorna Crozier) a Wintergreen Press chapbook, Pinhole Poetry, Orbis International Literary Journal, Poetry Plans (Bell Press), Qwerty, Prairie Fire ,and Poets in Response to Peril (eds. Penn Kemp, Richard Sitoski). Her forthcoming collection of poetry, Hag Dances will be published by At Bay Press.

Publisher: At Bay Press (May 29 2025)
Paperback: 8″ x 5″ | 150 pp
ISBN: 9781998779680

Pearl Pirie

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Pearl Pirie's latest is we astronauts (Pinhole Press, 2025). Pirie’s 4th poetry collection is footlights (Radiant Press, 2020). rain’s small gestures(Apt 9 Press, 2021) won the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize. www.pearlpirie.com and patreon.com/pearlpiriepoet