Joy McCall's latest book is witchsong of magic and grace. By now regular readers of McCall's work are familiar with the wood henges and misty fields of her Norwich home, but here are still mysteries unexplored, with the greatest mystery of them all creeping ever closer. The door to the other world has opened and she is lingering on its threshold, a witch between the worlds. She sings our sorrows and our joys. Nothing escapes her notice, not the ancient yews nor the bodies of bees. In sequences of various lengths and individual tanka, she has once again mapped the world of shadows found among...

Joy McCall's collection of tanka poetry, circling smoke, scattered bones, is the debut collection of a powerful new voice. Intensely autobiographical with a focus on the details of her daily life, they are also intensely social. Joy is not as an island, but a mother, daughter, sister, wife, friend, neighbor, nurse, helper, and witness to the tribulations and joys of her community in Norwich, England. Joy has compassion for all creatures: the spider dangling from its thread, mice, birds, madwomen, felons, old nuns, drunks, ghosts, and the unnamed dead with their broken gravestones. To...