oh you were strong
from “Familiar”
soft and malleable
but cast in ranges and rages
oh alpine creature
forged in schist and shattered hillsides
Which Witch Body
by Melanie McKerchar
Available 22 August 2025
ISBN: 978-1-0670252-1-2
paperback; 84 p.
160 mm x 225 mm
rrp $30
In Which Witch Body, Melanie McKerchar explores what it is to have a body that inhabits the margins of what we are taught is good. The witch body is a political statement, and the poems in this collection embody the grief, anger, joy and pride of a journey into disability. Fierce and fearless, sexy and savage, lush and loving and long overdue, Which Witch Body is “a climate fuelled bushfire to burn down all the bullshit”. Feminism, disability, colonisation and compassion all colour McKerchar’s second collection in a kaleidoscope of emotions that will leave readers roused and shaken, delivered back into a world that is vitally other than they had known.
They don’t let us burn things anymore
from “Winter wait”
when the bite of ice grips the bones,
makes brittle comfort lost.
Smoke and sea fog have danced together too long …
Me and Chilli loved this book. Weird and dark and beautiful in equal measure.
– DOMINIC HOEY
In it I could be an iceberg,
from “Lobby of the long coat”
the fates of hundreds hidden below
my waterline. And in this lobby,
this in-between, this airlock
protecting the unequipped from the
murky fantasies and fairy-tales
each red-tagged keyhole holds,
we are all wearing long coats
and masks. Always …
Embodied. Potent. Hypnotic. Melanie McKerchar’s poetry “spin[s] webs” circling tensions of the lived experience of disability, of bearing witness to the climate crisis, of speaking against the cynicism of controlling powers. As well as “going into the dark places”, the work thrums with defiance, stirring up the “blood magic” of survival; returning always to sea, sky, dirt and flesh.
– ANNABEL WILSON
if you make arsonists there will be fire
from “When you say Karen they win”
and all we witches will dance
together in the ashes of the past
and gather all the othered to our breasts
and raise them up with us.
Witch Body is an evocative and distinct collection, at once both grounded in place and in the happenings of the here and now, and yet also steeped in a quality of mythicism and lore. Writing from a sweet spot in between these tones, these poems weave together a broad array of kaupapa, from the hard-hitting, to the vulnerable, to the fabled. Witch Body is an affecting selection of work, and an unflinching insight into the world as it is through McKerchar’s lens.
– ISLA HUIA
Which Witch Body is available wherever good books are sold, or direct from SVP by clicking below:
Sudden Valley Press 