“I cannot recommend this book highly enough.”
— CAConrad, author of Listen to the Golden Boomerang Return
Y’all, it’s almost here.
Magical Poetics: The Power of Language and Effective Poetry
by Robert Eric Shoemaker
Publication Date: November 12, 2026
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Link to purchase: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/magical-poetics-9781350567368/#
Use the following discount code to save 20% on bloomsbury.com: GLR BD8
I’m so excited to share this book with you. It’s been baking for years at this point, and like any slow-stoked fire, this one feels especially warm to me.
You can preorder the hardback version of Magical Poetics now, due out November 12th. Recommend this book to your libraries and academic institutions! Hardback sales make up the majority of the book’s costs, and getting this into collections is a way to give this work a longer shelf life (hah). If you want to help but aren’t sure how, email me at robertericshoemaker@gmail.com and I’ll send some materials and ideas.
Also,
My literal heroes blurbed this book. I’m shaken in the best way to have these people side by side and supporting my work. Thank you, so much, for believing in me.
“Magical Poetics is a reassuring manual for the linguistic magician devoted to the art of poetry and the vision of inclusivity in which binaries are dispelled and categories dissolved.”
— KPrevallet, author of Trance Poetics, from the book’s foreword
From the back of the book:
Just like a magician, spiritual guide or modern-day witch, poets use their craft to tap into the inherent power of language as an agent of change, willing words to construct and alter reality through intentional acts and performances.
Through an examination of the linguistic, historical, and affective poetics of magic, this book shows how pragmatic magical practices from the ancient and Medieval worlds, and poetry from the English Romantics to the present day, leverage the same linguistic qualities to bring about change.
“Magic is a creative force, an inspiration for the imagination. In this absorbing book, Shoemaker explores the potency of language and the enchantment of our lives through poetry. Drawing upon esoteric histories and literary tradition, Magical Poetics provides a fascinating account of the transformative power of cultured expression.”
— Owen Davies, author of Grimoires: A History of Magic Books
Making the case that contemporary poets, especially poets of disenfranchised identity groups, write with language meant to do something, Robert Eric Shoemaker highlights how these writers successfully incant through language, using techniques such as metaphor, symbolism, chant and other magics, to change their readers by leveraging slippages of meaning. Drawing on the long histories of magical, religious, and ritual language, from modernist poets through the English Romantics and stretching back to poems and spells from the Middle Ages and ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Jewish traditions, this book establishes a theoretical, analytic, and practical framework for magical poetics. An introduction to the theory and topic, Magical Poetics manages and expands on important poetic legacies, establishes frameworks of contemporary practitioners and aids today’s writers and readers in seeing the importance of poetry in the everyday, positioning them as part of the larger lineage of poet-hierophants who may work to change the world with words.
“Shoemaker reads poetry as both archive and apparatus: a site where language conjures, unsettles, and reorients perception. The result is a radical reimagining of poetic practice as a mode of world-making, refusing the division between aesthetics and magic and instead treating their convergence as a generative force for thinking, feeling, and being.”
— Kristen E. Nelson, author of In the Away Time
For review copies, please contact: AcademicReviews@bloomsbury.com with the following information:
Book Title: Magical Poetics
Book ISBN: 9781350567368
Reviewing Organization/Journal/Publication/Media Name:
Recipient Name:
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For interviews, speaking events, or other opportunities and bookings, please contact: Robert Eric Shoemaker, robertericshoemaker@gmail.com
I’m happy to keep riding this wave with you.
Hugs,
-Eric
If you’d like to catch up on previous posts, visit “newsletter posts” from the menu on my website and enter the password: poetryismagic!
Robert Eric Shoemaker
Eric (he/him) is a poet, translator, and interdisciplinary artist. He is the author of the forthcoming Magical Poetics (Bloomsbury), translator of the forthcoming Saint Catherine of Siena: Prayers (One Subject Press), and author of three hybrid poetry books: Ca’Venezia (Partial Press, 2021), an artist’s book of hybrid writing and visual art; We Knew No Mortality (Acta Publications, 2018), poetry and memoir; and the poetry chapbook 30 Days Dry (Thought Collection Publishing 2015).
