Bewitched and Beguiled

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BEWITCHED AND BEGUILED draws on familiar personalities of the classical world and the world of faery, introducing each poem with a poet’s note, and wrapping it in a rich and appropriate original illustration.  The collection opens with two intricately structured crowns of heroic sonnets, drawing first on the sensuous spell-craft of Circe and then on the lucid intelligence of Athena. Here, enchantment is disciplined and resonant, shaped by rhythm, sound, and the cyclical architecture of the crown itself. The sequence deepens through poems centred on Prometheus and Pandora, where divine ambition and consequence fracture certainty. Form loosens. Tragedy unsettles order. Power reveals its cost. At the collection’s heart, a tonal shift begins. In ‘If I Were a Mermaid’, existential doubt gives way to volition: the speaker moves from cold uncertainty toward a conscious choice of kindness and joy. What follows is a vibrant unfurling – rollicking, playful, and rich with colour – where goblins, giants, and joy-fairies inhabit a world reshaped not by domination, but by imaginative generosity. Bewitched and Beguiled honours tradition while ultimately celebrating the liberating power of creative reinvention. It is a winner of a Proverse Publication Prize 2024. Bewitched and Beguiled is enhanced by the illustrations, made by Clive Solomon, which perfectly capture the mood and intention of the text.