Poetry Magic 1

Product Information

All poems published in Poetry News are also eligible forthe Hamish Canham Prize each year. The latest winner of the Hamish Canham Prize is Tom Bailey. Poetry News Winter 2023 competition: ‘Broken Vessels’

Modern scholars, in distinguishing magic from the normative discourses of religion and science, have often characterized magic by criteria deriving from earlier theological and anthropological models (especially that of Frazer). Versnel 1991 sets out most clearly these criteria; magic is characterized by a coercive attitude to the divine powers, concrete intention, impersonal action, and an anti-social social evaluation. 3 While such criteria fit modern uses of the term magic as a negative image of religion and/or science, they fail to distinguish the discourse of magic in ancient Greece. A coercive attitude toward the divine powers appears as a strategy in rites both normative and non-normative, and concrete intentions rather than abstract blessings are in fact generally the norm in ancient Greek prayers and rituals. The modern criteria treat magic as a wholly negative category, making it difficult to explain why some ancients would label their own activities in such a way. Our next members’ poems competition will be on the theme of ‘Broken Vessels’, proposed by our judge Naush Sabah. Naush is a writer, editor, critic, and educator based in the West Midlands. In 2019, she co-founded Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal where she is currently Editor and Publishing Director. Read Danez Smith’s “ Dinosaurs in the Hood.”What kind of magic or fantasy appears in these poems? What purpose does it serve? Have you ever wished you could re-write your story? Poems are not created by recipe, or by pouring content into a currently acceptable mould. Shape and content interact, in the final product and throughout the creation process, so that the poems will be continually asking what you are writing and why. The answers you give yourself will be illustrating your conceptions of poetry. Once again, those conception will develop – eventually to include experiences more viscerally part of you, since poems are not a painless juggling with words.The same Ephesia Grammata were reputed to have saved Croesus from burning on his pyre and to have enabled a wrestler who wore them to defeat all opponents—when the amulet was removed, he was thrown thirty times in a row (Eustathius on Odyssey XIX.247 2.201–2). Whether you see magic as a literal force that influences your life or as a fantastical idea, there is no better way to describe it than through poetry. Poems About Magic What distinguishes poetry from other literary compositions? Nothing, says a vociferous body of opinion: they are all texts, to be understood by the same techniques as a philosophic treatise or tabloid newspaper. But that makes sense only to readers of advanced magazines, for poetry does indeed seem different. Even if we accept that poetry can be verse or prose – verse simply having a strong metrical element – poetry is surely distinguished by moving us deeply. In fact, for all but Postmodernists, it is an art form, and must therefore do what all art does – represent something of the world, express or evoke emotion, please us by its form, and stand on its own as something autonomous and self-defining. And that mystery makes it so beautiful — both to read and to write. It helps us stretch our imaginations, get out of our comfort zones, and offers a glimpse of something that one might never see or realize or pay attention to.As a poet and teacher of poetry, I think that is magical. In fact, I wrote a whole book about it: The Magical Writing Grimoire.

By the way, don’t feel constrained or pressured by ideas of “good poetry,” or popular poetry. These are poems for you; they’re magic. They’re your essence. They’re not meant to be published or shared with the world. Write the poetry that speaks to you. In your voice. In whatever language you want to write in.The argument of Seppilli’s Poesia e magia is briefly stated by the literary critic Thomas Greene: ‘the invocation as prayer lies in a middle position between magical rites, which were regarded as coercive, and poetic invocations which are not expected to produce the literal results they request’. In many languages, a word like ‘carmen’ was used first to mean charm before it came to mean poem. In other words, poetry evolved out of magic, and is related to prayer. The exhibition will celebrate Seppilli’s insight and approach by bringing together a series of objects and art works to create cross-cultural dialogues that will explore the relationship of poetry and magic. Poems are an act of discovery, and require immense effort – to write and to be understood. The argument against popular amateur poetry is not that it uses out-of-date forms (there is no authority here, and art is always an mixture of elements coming in and going out of fashion) but that popular poetry finds its conceptions too readily. Contrary to contemporary dogma, poetry doesn’t have to be challenging, but it does have to explore the nature and geography of the human condition. These poems capture the experience of liminality, highness, and the dream state. As you write, you are channeling, translating, and creating a space of sacred connection. A spell is an active, dynamic thing — one that is created as it is cast. Every time you read the poem aloud afterward, it can call on that same energy.

A friend and I had been sleeping in a Sadhu’s tent near the Ganga river in the Indian city of Varanasi. We awoke to the clatter of a large man bursting in, followed by two others, all wearing fearsom expressions. Before any of us had lifted our heads, his voice boomed with his demands. This rhetoric of systematicity also characterizes many of the alchemical writings from antiquity, especially the works of Zosimus of Panopolis, a Greek writer from 3rd–4th century ce Egypt. Alchemy consists of the transformations of the qualities of matter (from grey lead to gleaming gold, from clear crystal to purple amethyst, etc.), as well as, in some texts, of spirit or soul. In processes sometimes compared to the work of the creator god, the alchemist purifies his object (be it matter or soul) from undesirable qualities and then imbues it with new virtues. The extraordinary efficacy of the procedures involved in such transformations is further marked by the extraordinary complexity of the performances, involving specialized knowledge that only a learned magician might know. Much of the technical knowledge seems to come from Hellenistic systematizations of the secret lore about stones and metals, and the 5th century bce philosopher Demokritos is often credited as the original founder of the art, which he received from Persian magicians like Ostanes (PM 3 35–64 Martelli = CAAG II. 42.21–43.22). Here are 15 of the best poems about magic, sourced from a variety of cultures, traditions, and poets, both ancient and modern. Included are poems about witchcraft, fairies, and enchanted woods, as well as the magic of love and the magic of awareness. If you enjoy these magic poems enough, perhaps you’ll consider practicing a little magic yourself. Maybe even by writing magical poetry. “Her Kind” by Anne Sexton November 2023, 6.30pm. Poetry & Magic – Celebrating Anita Seppilli. Private view of the exhibition. Martina Mazzotta will be in conversation with the artists Stephen Chambers, Marcelle Hanselaar, Theresa Mikuriya and Ana Maria Pacheco. The deity Abrasax is invoked to drive off the unknown daimon or other hostile entity that afflicts little Sophia-Priskilla.

Give AI a Try!

You can also create poetry spells by focusing each line or section on a specific intention, color, archetype, or goal. If we are the soil, the poetry is the rose that blooms. And the magic — that’s what brings it to the surface. None of that is easily accomplished, given the pressures of everyday life. Nor is there wide agreement on what sort of apprenticeship should be served. Schools of poetry are often hostile to, if not contemptuous of, other movements, and what is prized in one may be anathema to another. The beginning poet should read widely, join many groups, take any criticism seriously, but perhaps remember these points: