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. Written for poets
spellcasters and social justice witches Poetry as Spellcasting reveals the ways poetry and
ritual can together move us toward justice and transformation. It asks: If ritualized
violence upholds white supremacy what ritualized acts of liberation can be activated to
subvert and reclaim power? In essays from a diverse group of contributing poets organizers
and ritual artists Poetry as Spellcasting helps readers explore play and deepen their
creativity and intuition as integral tools for self- and communal healing and social change.
Each section opens with a poem and includes prompts that invite the reader to engage more
deeply with: Portals of Inheritance: Ancestral Teachings Possible Futures opens portals to
messages from ancestors and for survival Languages of Liberation Disruption and Magic
explores how poetry and spellcasting allow us to enter into and harness language in active
heightened ways that both reflect reality and manifest alternatives. Invoking Radical
Imagination leans into the incantatory possibilities of poetry as prayer and poetry as
enchantment. Sacred Practices: Rituals of Repair and Revision explores writing as ritual
ritual as practice and practice as doing drawing connections between the creative practices
of poetry and spellwork. Lighting Fires Breaking Chains focuses on the explicitly magical and
political nature of poetry as spellcasting. Elemental Ecologies Spiritual Technologies
wrestles with concepts of home colonization and belonging Both poetry and occult studies
have 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.
