Kelly Rose Pflug-Back Livres

The name of this collection of poetry is no mere hyperbole. When the G-20 met in Toronto, Canada in 2010 behind armed thugs and fortress walls to discuss the fate of the world, Kelly Pflug-Back was among those who took to the streets to counter it with the militancy that the situation demanded. The cops dragged her off and tormented her in jail for a month while the government attempted to frame her as the leader of the infamously leaderless Black Bloc. Many of her charges were dropped, but she pled guilty to the destruction of several police cars and corporate storefronts and was sentenced to fifteen months behind bars for daring to be free, for writing her poetry with action and words alike.

Blending lore and magic with contemporary questions around belief and beauty, power and fear, this stunning new poetry collection from Kelly Rose Pflug-Back is a grimoire for our times. Spanning centuries, The Hammer of Witches reaches from present-day urban dystopias and the unlikely enchantments that they harbour, to medieval Norway, where the first Christian king waged war on the country’s gender-nonconforming wizards. Macabre imagery, speculative themes, and everyday mysticism blur the distinction between the real and the unreal, challenging modern concepts of beauty, power, and fear. In her first full-length collection, Kelly Rose Pflug-Back weaves together the magical and the monstrous, the sacred and the profane, to make sense of a world where primeval forests are clear-cut to build parking lots, and where it often seems that the gods have all gone to live behind the veil.