Published in 2023
5 hours and 25 minutes
Tamiko Beyer is the author of the poetry collections Last Days and We Come Elemental. Her poetry and articles have been published by Denver Quarterly, Black Warrior Review, Lit Hub, and the Rumpus. Beyer publishes Starlight and Strategy, a monthly newsletter for living life wide awake and shaping change.
Destiny Hemphill is a Black daughter of the U.S. South with nearly a decade of experience in co-creating spaces devoted to poetry, communion, and transformation. She has received fellowships from Tin House, Callaloo, and Naropa University, and is a co-poetry editor of Southern Cultures.
Lisbeth White has worked in private practices as an arts therapist for 13 years, supporting individual and community mental health. She has facilitated community-based workshops for healing justice work, including Black artist-activist residencies at Blue Mountain Center, and has taught and coordinated healing spaces for Black Love Convergence, BIPOC yoga teacher trainings, and Parenting for Liberation. She is the author of the poetry collection American Sycamore.
What is this book about?
Poems, essays, and prompts to sing a new world into being—Queer & BIPOC perspectives on poetry as an insurgent ritual for manifesting liberation and reclaiming power.
For poets, spellcasters, and social justice witches, Poetry as Spellcasting positions poetry as a vehicle for healing-justice transformation.
It asks: If ritualized violence upholds white supremacy, what ritualized acts of liberation can be activated to subvert and reclaim power?
Through essays from a diverse group of contributing poets, organizers, and ritual artists, Poetry as Spellcasting helps listeners explore, play, and deepen their creativity and intuition as integral tools for self- and communal healing and social change. Each section opens and closes with a poem, ending with exercises and invitations to the listener.
- Part I explores the ways in which language can both reflect and manifest reality—and shows that poetry and spellcasting allow us to enter into and harness language in active, heightened ways.
- Part II focuses on summoning the Earth’s power, highlighting the magic of eco-poetry in the anthropocene and inviting listeners into the embodied knowledge of the Earth.
- Part III explores writing as ritual, ritual as practice, and practice as doing, drawing connections between the creative practices of poetry and spellwork.
- Part IV centers on teachings from ancestors, practices for possible futures, and the legacy of poetry as political practice.
Both poetry and occult studies have both been historically dominated by white, cishet writers; here, Poetry as Spellcasting reclaims the centrality of queer and BIPOC voices in poetry, magic, and liberatory spellwork.
