Happy new year and all that. I got some money for Xmas and immediately bought Enchanting the Shadowlands by Lorna Smithers, a Brythonic Polytheist in Lancashire that I’ve had some conversation with and whose writing I admire. She is a poet and story teller, and will be editing the second issue of the Gods&Radicals journal, A beautiful resistance. Lorna’s blog can be found here; I thoroughly recommend you read it.

Enchanting the Shadowlands is a collections of poetry and stories inspired by the landscape around Lorna’s home in Lancashire and dedicated to Gwyn ap Nudd, of whom she is a devotee, and the local land spirits.It was published in 2015 and is available from Lulu (ISBN 978-1-326-14190-5); the link is available from Lorna’s blog. It is a short, paperback volume on good quality, but not heavy, paper. The cover photograph is quite lovely.

I enjoyed this collection of poetry and stories, it washed over me like a calming tide; just the sort of thing I needed to recover from being sociable last week. It rather inspired me to think about my own landscape and the poetry that it could inspire if I listened to the land (I may inflict bad poetry on you at some point in the future).

The poems are inspired; they touched something deep inside, causing me to forget the world around me and travel westward to the hills and coasts of a different time and place.

Recommended.