Carpophorus edition
450 exemplars (50 hors commerce)
Copper shot crushed cloth, black foil spirit of Mandragora. Black head and tail bands, black endpapers.
Archival quality paper.

Mandragora – further explorations in esoteric poesis.
A companion volume to Datura comprising nine extensive essays and the works of 48 poets. A chthonic and deeply rooted work.

Pulled from the ground, its shrieks threatening madness, carved and anointed, given form and breath…so it is, the Word walks.

Dreams and revelations put to paper form the body of this second anthology of esoteric poesis. Datura, that silver deadly bloom, unfurled its petals to reveal the harmonics of inspiration born of moonlight, a narcotic song sung by a siren. Mandragora continues in this tradition, yet thrums also with its own chthonic music – the pulse of stars beneath the earth. The blood-body and the soul-mind meeting each other in the word, in things that grow and shift below – mycelia and nutritive rot, the green heart of a seed turning in the lightless deeps.

Yes, the poetry in Mandragora drives deep into the humus heart of experience – spellwork, praise, story, song. From the breathless brevity of haiku through the humming rhythm of the long meditation the thread of hidden history runs, telling in mosaic the story of the occultist, the witch, the worshipper, the scholar and the celebrant. Like Datura, this is a work of many voices from a rich diversity of practice, each burning the wick to illuminate a piece of the Great Work. Some voices will be familiar to those readers of the first anthology, some will be new, and all are testament to a continuing dedication to the sublime and challenging work of poetic and artistic craft in our communities.