Somehow in this crazy-busy semester I’ve kept up with creative writing, which is leading to a very cool publication credit at the witchy-leaning zine Wyrd & Wyse.
A couple of fairy-tale studies friends introduced me to Wyrd & Wyse almost a year ago, except I wasn’t able to get my hands on an issue to look at until a few months ago. Why? Because Wyrd & Wyse is essentially a hybrid of a zine and a literary journal: a limited-run print publication that you have to preorder.
Issue the Second is available to predorder for another week, up through May 11, and I mention this because I’m thrilled to have placed some poems in it.
But wait, you might be thinking, this would be more appropriate for the Patheos Pagan channel than the Patheos Nonreligious channel, given the zine’s witchy focus.
And… yeah? Ish? I still skew agnostic/atheist, and I still conduct my research, teaching, and general attempts at ethical living through that lens. But I love the idea of Wyrd & Wyse for a few reasons: I study the intersections of religion and folklore, and have learned enough about neo-paganism, as well as contemporary and historical witchcraft practices, to want to study them more. I appreciate the zine’s mission to donate some of their profits to charity. The witchy aesthetic, and the pagan focus on environmentalism, both resonate with me. I try not to be appropriative, or a tourist, in my interest in witchy things, which among other things means that I try to support friends and communities who are more involved in it than I am.
Additionally, this issue is themed along transitions, and boy has that been relevant to my life lately.
Last year, I published a personal essay in Split: true stories about the end of marriage and what happens next. I’m still really proud of that piece, and its focus on rites of passage, despite how emotionally difficult it was to write.
My two poems that were selected for publication in Wyrd & Wyse are both based on folklore, and also have some basis in my personal experiences. One is more fairy-tale based, and the other more based in Greek mythology. Both address identities in transition, and how we perceive the identities of those who might be misunderstood or marginalized. That’s all I’ll say for now.
Anyway, if this doesn’t jive with you, I’ll remind you that I contributed an essay to Not Seeing God, a collection of writing from many of the Patheos Nonreligious channel’s bloggers. Go read that instead.
As my nutty semester winds down, hopefully I’ll have more time to write here, and more to report back on both my scholarly and creative writing. A couple of neat academic projects are in the works, and given that I’m into scholarly communication, I’ll probably make a point of at least mentioning those here as I get back into the swing of regular blogging.