wyrd] bird

Claire Marie Stancek's wyrd] bird is a book-length lyric essay on the Wyrd] bird grapples with the necessity and impossibility of affirming mystical experience in times of ecological and individual loss, deconstructing a Western tradition of good and evil by rereading and upsetting central poetic texts. It searches for an expression of visionary experience that remains rooted in the body, a mode of questioning that echoes out into further questioning, and a cry of elegiac loss that grips onto love.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 88 pages
Publication date: 15 January 2021
Publisher: Omnidawn Publishing

In the face of ecological and personal devastation, Claire Marie Stancek's wyrd] bird explores the paradoxical nature of affirming mystical experience. This multifaceted work manifests as a book-length lyric essay on the 12th-century German mystic Hildegard of Bingen, a dream journal, a fragmentary notebook, a collection of poems, and a scrapbook of photographic ephemera. Stancek embarks on a journey alongside Hildegard, guiding the poet through an underworld of climate catastrophe and political violence, populated by literary, mythical, and historical figures ranging from Milton's Eve to the biblical Satan to Keats's hand. Through a deconstruction of Western notions of good and evil, wyrd] bird challenges the foundations of traditional poetic texts. By rejecting dualistic logic, the book seeks to express visionary experience that remains grounded in the body, fosters a mode of questioning that extends into further inquiry, and utters an elegiac lament that clings tenaciously to love.

Weight: 176g
Dimension: 228 x 154 x 8 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781632430847