Clive at the Castle, Marly at Brazen Head

CLIVEAN

The images: "Clive Hicks-Jenkins and the Art of the Book" at Hay Castle, including art from Seren of the Wildwood (WisebloodBooks), Charis in the World of Wonders (IgnatiusPress), and Maze of Blood (Mercer University Press.) The Charis images shown here are on Sussex Lustreware's World of Wonders line.

From Clive via Instagram:

Hay Castle, Hay-on-Wye

Dec 5th 2025 - March 8th 2026

Book covers and illustrations of the past ten years, including some never-before exhibited works for publishers @designfortoday, @foliosociety @faberbooks, #merceruniversitypress, @wiseblood_books_press, @ignatius_press and @penguinukbooks.

Original artworks for Beauty & Beast, Beowulf, Maze of Blood, Glimmerglass, The Owl and the Nightingale, Seren of the Wildwood, The Iliad/Odyssey, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (@penfoldpress for Faber & Faber) and Charis in the World of Wonders, as well as designs produced for @sussex_lustreware and @janesglass.

* * * * *

NEW AT THE BRAZEN HEAD

"Eastern-inspired gems from Marly Youmans" -- The Brazen Head on X

The wonderful Brazen Head has published a group of five poems of mine. Some are the result of travels to Singapore and Seoul from the past summer, and others drifted along in their wake. Several of them join together the beauty of Otsego Lake with faraway Asian images. To read, go HERE.

Pentina for the Childhood Dream of Hong Zhu An -- After seeing My Dream from 50 Years Ago, National Gallery, Singapore

A Tang Scholar-Poet in the Stables

Idylls of Spring 

Blue Scene, Gold Box -- After seeing Geumgwedo (1656) by Jo Sok, National Museum of Korea

Four Winter Treasures at Otsego Lake

Halloween at New Verse Review

The Halloween issue of New Verse Review is online... edited by founding editor Steven Knepper, and Zina Gomez-Liss. It begins with a poem by me and ends with one by Jared Carter, and in between are a great many curious and interesting poems. Jump-scares HERE.  To attend the 8-9 p.m. Friday October 17 Zoom reading from the issue, go HERE for free tickets via Eventbrite.

Surfacing with a few poems

Apology-and-poems

I've neglected sending out poems and posting for a long time because of far-flung travels, a long stay in North Carolina after my mother's death, those peculiarly-named small but wicked demons Madame Plantar Faciitis and Sir Histamine Intolerance, and also the general oceanic chaos that is sometimes life. Luckily, I sent a few poems out and also received some welcome requests. So here are what new or recent-ish publications that come to mind. I'm afraid it's a bit random. Rather lazily, I have sometimes simply pointed to a page that gathers all my poems from different issues in one place, so be sure and ramble around and read other poets in the archives. (And in fact, you may find more of my poems from earlier years there if you keep scrolling down at The Brazen Head.)

I do have some (eight, maybe?) new poems coming out in The Colosseum, The Brazen Head, and New Verse Review... All three journals are good homes for poets who write in form, and they have interesting poet-editors. And I think a number of those poems reflect some of my travels of the past year and a half (Canada, Italy, Spain, Czech Republic, Hungary, Singapore, and South Korea--whew!), particularly in Asia.

• "A Painter of the Eleventh Century" in Mezzo Cammin

• "Aelfstan the Illuminator Begins a Work," English-Speaking Union (Victoria Branch, Australia) / ESU Formal Verse Contest 2024: Runner-up to the First Prize. President's Choice Award. Published at the English-Speaking Union (Victoria Branch) site and in The Brazen Head.
• "Blue and Shadow" in The Brazen Head
• "Child and Ancient Mask" in Mezzo Cammin
• "Jenetta, Blessed" in The Borough (Australia)
• From the archives — "Landscape With Icefall" in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily
• "Making and the Blackbird" in Presence (2025)
• "My Fox Wife" in The Borough (Australia)
• "Saint Thief" in New Verse Review
• "The Cartaghena Fair" in The Brazen Head
• "The Castle that is the World" (crown of sonnets) in Gramarye (University of Chichester, UK)
• "The Deepening Shade in The Borough (Australia)
• "The Maker in the Snows" in the special issue in memory of poet Jane Greer from New Verse Review.  A Tribute to Jane Greer: Poets and Friends Remember Jane Greer (1953-2025)
• "Thomas the Rhymer and the Ancient Paths" in Gramarye (University of Chichester, UK)
• "Woman in the Land of Dream-after-storm" in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily

Confetti, champagne, and singing petunias--

Video of the presentation...

Pleased to have won two of the four prizes in this rare international contest for formal poetry--and also tickled that Jesse won the big one. Winning poems can be read here. The full shortlist, which names two of my poems, can be found here. Many thanks to the English-Speaking Union (Victoria Branch), ESU President Robert Furlan, judging poet Stephen Edgar, and Lucas Smith of the ESU and Bonfire Books. (And congratulations to Lucas Smith for his Wiseblood residency award!)

Here's the announcement:

ESU Formal Verse Contest 2024 - Winners
The English-Speaking Union (Victoria Branch) is pleased to announce the winners for the inaugural ESU Formal Verse Contest, for a metrical, rhymed or unrhymed poem of 70 lines or less.

We had a large number of entries from poets in Australia, the USA, Canada and Germany and thank everyone for participating. The final winners were selected by Prime Minister’s Award-winning poet Stephen Edgar. The President’s Choice Award was chosen by ESU Victoria Branch President Robert Furlan. The winners were announced at an Awards Ceremony in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia on 14 December 2024.

Congratulations to our winners!

Winning Poems:

First Prize ($5,000) “Continuing City” - Jesse Keith Butler (Canada). Coming soon: a video of Jesse reading his winning poem.

What struck and impressed me about this poem was the way the form to some extent enacts the content. The formal regularity of the iambic pentameter and the strict rhyme scheme—both handled with skill—are shaken and pulled apart by enjambment and sentences which lie at odds with that rigid grid, mirroring the disruptions to the city’s stable forms by demolition and construction. Repetition of key words creates a sense of urgency, or even panic, and, literally rising above the damaged cityscape, the poem builds to a dystopian vision of the future. --Stephen Edgar

Runner-up ($1,000) “Learning Greek” - Kevin Hart (Australia)

This trancelike--indeed, entrancing--poem in iambic pentameter, though unrhymed, has quite different strategies from the winning poem. Here, the marriage between meter and grammar establishes a mood of quiet ecstasy or yearning. Indeed, the Greek word in the poem, Έπέκτασις, literally a straining-towards, tempts one to read ekstasis. The poem brought to mind Wallace Stevens's adage that the world about us would be desolate except for the world within us. The world within represented by the two languages the poet studies, Greek and French, which inform and transform the world without, or the speaker--in the end virtually recreating it. --Stephen Edgar (transcribed--I hope accurately--from the video)

Runner-up ($1,000) “Ælfstan the Illuminator Begins a Work” - Marly Youmans (USA)

I admired the ambitious scope and richly imagined details of this poem. It made me think fleetingly, though the two poems are quite different in mood and content, of Robert Browning’s ‘A Grammarian’s Funeral’, in its reimagining of a mediaeval world and ethos. The language and imagery are impressively charged and evocative, and the poem embodies the very creative process it describes, whereby the naked page is filled with ‘the rich illuminations of the year’. --Stephen Edgar

President's Choice Award ($1,000) “Ælfstan the Illuminator Begins a Work” - Marly Youmans (USA)

An impressive depiction of creativity - from the void of a blank page to the emergence of ideas and images embedded in life's experiences. The sparrow's flight imagery is a clever use of Bede's parable - the flashing wings of insight and inspiration leading to a masterful illuminated expression of meaning. The poem's use of cognitive images which extend beyond the standard earth-bound images of nature are sublime:  "A cosmos gleaming with possibility"; "the Apocalypse of birth" ; "a cloak of endlessness". A refined and thought-provoking poem. --Robert Furlan

In other news, there are some new reviews of Seren of the Wildwood, and I'll soon post excerpts on the Seren-page.

Illumination by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
for Seren of the Wildwood from Wiseblood Books

Whee! A book landing on the list...

CURRENT's 100 Books of the 21st Century

Read the intro and run your peepers down to no. 29!

Birthday frolics

Signing books on the Village Library of Cooperstown lawn, 1-3 pm on Sunday, June 2. Including the newest books from Wiseblood Books and Ignatius Press.

Kingdom Poets, Clive, Seren, Charis, more...

Here's a sprinkling of recent poems and notices. I've become bad about adding things here because blogs are in abeyance, but these are a few things that have popped up recently.

A glad thank you is due to D. S. Martin for a column in Kingdom Poets. He talks about and quotes from Seren of the Wildwood (Wiseblood Books, 2023) and then features my poem, "The Hand" (previous published in Artemis; reprint & audio at The New Decameron.)  

And here's another poem that is accruing shares on twitter:  "The Third, the Youngest Sson in Fairy Tales." Curtal sonnet that fools around with the collision between longish multisyllabic and monosyllabic rhymes. In The North American American Anglican.

Clive Hicks-Jenkins on the other side of the pond, writing on instagram about making the art 🎨 for Seren of the Wildwood (WisebloodBooks, 2023) 🌿, along with comments on the Seth Wright review in Front Porch Republic.

Sad about the end of fall, but here's "Hunger and Cloud" to read from Ekstasis. "In dreams, we eat the cloud of unknowing, / Not with medieval..." 

Loving fresh attention to Charis in the World of Wonders via the Well-Read Mom October read, yet not forgetting new Seren of the Wildwood (WisebloodBooks). Seth Wright's review, "A Plunge into the Mythic Wood," from Front Porch Republic: "Youmans’ gift for creating primordial archetypal images that stir the gut and fascinate the eye of the mind places her among the best of the poets." I need to post some clips from recent reviews soon!

Next reading and Hollins Critic review clip

The Village Library reading: 6 p.m., Tuesday April 25th

From The Hollins Critic review

Seren of the Wildwood is a magical book, a visionary journey through motherhood and the rebellious, unwieldy life-force of the universe. It includes equally magical cover art and interior illustrations by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, who frequently illustrates Youmans's books. The publisher's web page says that "Wiseblood Books fosters works of fiction, poetry, and philosophy that find redemption in uncanny places and people." Indeed they do.  

--Amanda Cockrell, The Hollins Critic, Vol. LX, no. 2, April 2023.

Marly in a hat, 2023

More review clips for Seren of the Wildwood

Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins

SETH WRIGHT at FRONT PORCH REPUBLIC

Youmans’ gift for creating primordial archetypal images that stir the gut and fascinate the eye of the mind places her among the best of the poets. If you’re a connoisseur, even a lapsed or dilatory one, of narrative poetry, buy Seren of the Wildwood and read it today...

What is particularly impressive about Youmans’ weaving is her ability to use such venerable archetypes freshly. Yes, I’ve met them all before, and given time I could tell you where... The same with the landmarks and inhabitants of Youmans’ Wildwood; they seem hauntingly familiar yet disconcertingly strange. Her power simultaneously to defamiliarize and reenchant is enviable and deliciously enjoyable...

My first encounter with Seren of the Wildwood brought to mind dozens of my favourite poems, poems that over the millennia people have taken the trouble to read, copy, annotate, memorise, and perform. Seren of the Wildwood reminded me of them by way of family resemblance; the poem is at home among the poems that last. It is a good poem. A very good poem.  

--Seth Wright, Front Porch Republic, 10 April 2023; read the long, thoughtful essay HERE

JONATHAN GELTER at SLANT BOOKS BLOG

Marly Youmans, in Seren of the Wildwood, now available from Wiseblood Books, offers a vivid fantasy. I will call it that even though the word fantasy appears several times in the story in its meaning of something untrue, a hallucination or deceptive visionary experience. And well it might—although by the end we witness a wonderful transformation of the idea of fantasy—for deceptive visionary experience sets the plot in motion. An invisible creature whom the young girl Seren (Welsh for “star”) names Ariel lures her into the Wildwood, on whose border she lives with her parents. She had two older brothers, but they died just as Seren was born: it is suggested by the narrator a curse emanating from someone in the Wildwood sickened them. 

Youmans’s command of the poetic form is masterful, and a superb choice for fantasy, invoking as it does one of the great medieval fantasists in English.  

--Jonathan Geltner, "The Spirit of Fantasy and the Sense of Place," Slant Books, 6 March 2023: read this interesting essay HERE

Two novelists on Seren

Beth Garst of Howl'n Dog Designs
reads Seren on a Virginia porch swing...

AMANDA COCKRELL

I was given a review copy of Seren and couldn’t put it down. It’s lyrical and magical and offers a glimpse of the places usually seen only from the corner of the eye. --novelist Amanda Cockrell

(Amanda Cockrell assigned a review for The Hollins Critic: out soon!)

* * *

GLYNN YOUNG

...The reader is struck by two things almost immediately. First, the sheer imagination of this work is marvelous. It’s an engaging, enthralling story, part epic, part fairy tale, part Iliad and part Odyssey. It’s the story of a girl who, through no fault of her own, finds herself an actor in an unexpected drama.

The second striking thing is the discipline that’s required to write a work like this. You don’t write 61 poems of 21 ten-syllable lines each followed by a five-line rhyming coda without determination, focus, the self-confidence that you’ll finish it, and even courage to undertake it in the first place.

Simply put, Seren of the Wildwood dazzles while it provokes fundamental questions. Is life simply what’s fated for us, or are we free agents? How do we deal with guilt? How do we accept the responsibilities thrust upon us? How do we live during this perilous journey called life?

...The work is illustrated by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, a Welsh artist/illustrator who’s worked with Youmans on all but one of her book covers. He’s illustrated several books for Simon Armitage, the current British Poet Laureate, and also the forthcoming translation of Beowulf by Seamus Heaney for the Folio Society.

Seren of the Wildwood is one of the most imaginative works I’ve read, and especially in poetry. It’s the kind of work that you know is changing you as you read it, and you emerge from it as not quite the same person you were before. It’s not unlike what happens to Seren on her journey through the wildwood.  

--Novelist Glynn Young, "Marly Youmans has written a marvelous epic story." Read more HERE.

A writer and an artist respond to Seren

Seren, by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
from Seren of the Wildwood
(Wiseblood Books, 2023, hc/pb)

ANDREW FRISARDI

Marly Youmans’s verse-narrative Seren of the Wildwood is a bildungsroman or coming-of-age tale about a young girl named Seren, told in the archetypal-dream language of a fairy tale. Seren experiences the universal realities of the loss of innocence through trauma and betrayal, of the self individuating from the matrix of childhood, of sexual awakening and childbirth, and of finding a relationship to the world via a journey into the ambiguous world of nature, dreams, and encounters with various characters both benevolent and duplicitous. 

I won’t give the story away by describing the details of its plot, so let’s just say that, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, Seren during her adventures is not in the Kansas of routine life anymore. The characters and the woodland creatures and plants that Seren encounters in Wildwood are either supernatural or natural or both. Fairy tales or myths are stories that take place in the imagination, a middle world between the material and the intellectual ones, where meanings become images and images meanings, and this is where Youmans sets her story. Wildwood is the world of imagination, the inner life of the outer world.       --Poet, translator, essayist Andrew Frisardi

 LEONARD GRECO

...what’s moved me most is Marly Youmans latest “ Seren of the Wildwood “ handsomely published by Wiseblood Books. Marly’s fairytale ( beautifully illuminated by Clive Hicks-Jenkins) weaves a complexity of archetypes and sensations , one recalls the lays of Chrétien, Rossetti’s “Goblin Market," the psychoanalytic work of Melanie Klein. Youmans, in her telling this tale explained to me the ambivalence Grendel’s mother must have felt for her challenging offspring. It’s a rich story, one I recommend highly; so rich in fact that I needed to place my impressions upon paper, which follows in the second image. Marly is a gifted visionary, her many published works reflect her unique talents, in “Seren” she presents a tale of no particular time or place, magical yet not absurdist, familiar yet surprising. Wiseblood Books has a convenient site to order from, a range of many attractive offerings (which I’ve already been tempted and eagerly await arrival), to those liminally inclined, I suggest a visit, you will not be disappointed.     --Artist Leonard D. Greco of L.A. and Chicago

Response to Seren of the Wildwod
from artist Leonard D. Greco

And there are many new images on social media as well...

Seren of the Wildwood March readings--

Saturday, March 18  3:00

Reading with Sally Thomas

City Lights Bookstore 

3 East Jackson St.

Sylva, North Carolina

828-586-9499

Thursday, March 23 7:00 p.m.

Reading with Sally Thomas

Goldberry Books

12 Union St. South

Concord, North Carolina

(980) 439-5050

Friday, March 10

Launch Party near D. C.

The Washington Review: "Charles and Tessa Carman will host novelist and poet Marly Youmans [“the best-kept secret among contemporary American writers.” —John Wilson] for a house reading and signing of her new novel-in-verse Seren of the Wildwood (Wiseblood Books) on Friday, March 10, at 7 p.m. Interested folks can RSVP tlccarman[at]protonmail.com"

Thanks to the Carman family for a wonderful launch party!

Launch Day, March 6

Seren at the home of poet and writer
David Russell Mosley
(Wiseblood Books)

Launch Day review from poet/translator/writer Jonathan Geltner at the Slant Books blog. Wiseblood Books notes that it "situates the poem within the world of fantasy & showcases a few beautiful excerpts." To read, fly HERE.

I'm celebrating having survived Covid and reached Launch Day with some ginger tea... sitting here under the rosy shadow of a whole forest of amaryllis blooms...

Seren of the Wildwood is the weekly feature of Autumn Sky Poetry Daily. To see, go HERE. And thanks to editor Christine Klocek-Lim!

And HERE is a Launch-Day newsletter from Wiseblood Books, with a link to a hardcover Launch-Day discount in celebration...

Seren: video, newsletter, review, more...

                                            CLICK ME, says Alice's video, though rather shyly.

VISUAL ART

on this page and the pages of Seren of the Wildwood is the splendid handiwork of Clive Hicks-Jenkins.

WISEBLOOD NEWSLETTER 

Eep! I've been posting away on social media and entirely forgetting the blog. But here I am, and HERE's today's newsletter from Wiseblood Books, focusing on Seren of the Wildwood and Dana Gioia's translation of Seneca’s The Madness of Hercules. Interesting letter with links for pre-orders (better hurry if you want a pre-order price--and you can get the pre-order price plus shipping if you live abroad), and even a homemade video from moi! Enjoy...

FIRST REVIEW

And here is the very first review of the book, a happy long double-pager. Click to enlarge. I'm grateful to Tessa Carman for spending her time on it, and to Fr. Mark Michael for assigning a review in The Living Church (ECUSA/Anglican Communion.) Don't I need business cards that read Master Enchanter now?

SEREN LOUNGING ON CHINOISERIE

Here you may see three Seren of the Wildwood (Wiseblood Books) copies at the home of L.A.-and-Chicago artist Leonard D. Greco, Jr. 

MORE

I'll be doing a reading near D. C. in early March, and then at City Lights (Sylva) and Goldberry (Concord) at mid-month. After that, some in and near Cooperstown. And then we shall see. I have a house reading scheduled, and I'm also open to those if they're not too far from Cullowhee or Cooperstown, or on the road between...

The Rollipoke 23, with more Seren news, is HERE.

The Rollipoke, 23: Cover reveal! Pre-order links! More!

in-process detail, jacket/cover image
by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
for Seren of the Wildwood

My TinyLetter newsletter, The Rollipoke, went out to subscribers early this morning. This time I'm opening it up to the public, as it is the first announcement for Seren of the Wildwood (Wiseblood Books, March 6, 2023.)

Here's the full address, which you are welcome to share: https://tinyletter.com/Marly_Youmans/letters/rollipoke-23-cover-reveal-pre-orders-and-more Jump to the newsletter by clicking HERE.

Wiseblood, Seren, poems

1,

From the Wiseblood Books End-of-2022 newsletter:

Seren of the Wildwood, a long fantasy story in verse by Marly Youmans, forthcoming in March of 2023. Youmans is an award-winning author of over fifteen books, including, most recently, Charis in the World of Wonders. Appreciating the way in which Seren "whispers to our fractured souls," Makoto Fujimura calls the poem "an adventure that is at once psychologically potent and fantastical," and Amit Majmudar illumines that Youmans, by "hybridizing the 'bob and wheel' of medieval poetry with the iambic pentameter narratives of the Romantic and Victorian era, conjures a time-frame outside time, perfectly suited to the story. This book is itself a 'Wildwood' where fey, elusive, illusory phenomena draw the protagonist—and the reader—deeper and deeper into mystery.” Seren will contain cover and interior illustrations by the Welsh artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins, including these three here (click on the images):

To see the images and read the entire and very interesting newsletter, go HERE.

2.

Out-in-December poems 

I've been forgetting to post poems on the blog, as more people tend to read them via links on twitter or facebook these days, but here are the out-in-December ones I can remember (alas, I've had to rush away from home and don't have access to all my records.)

New poem in First Things: The Mortal Longing After Loveliness This one not "about" but is oddly apt for the Christmas season. I wonder how many poems Xerxes has marched into...

New poem in Willows Wept: Summer's End (page 53) I'd forgotten this one; poets are moody, it seems!

And if you have a subscription to print-only journal Blue Unicorn (they're very rare, those lovely, melancholy blue ones), you'll find one in there this month as well, thanks to a bit of delay on an issue.

3.

A new page 

is up for Seren of the Wildwood, so check it out! See tabs above. Blurbs-in-full plus more of those ever-delightful Hicks-Jenkins illuminations...

Matters of Beauty

I'm on a panel talking about the short(ish) film, "Why Beauty Matters," in Delhi's lovely old public library  on the 13th. at 2:30... Regional friends, come see the movie and discuss!

* * *

Small new poem: Old Women on the Churchyard Wall at Better than Starbucks. I've been stretched thin this year and haven't sent much out. Maybe by the end of the year...

Wordishly

My beautiful child!

FAVORITE LINE AT THE COUNTY FAIR

"The Beautiful Child Contest is now underway at the Cow and Sheep Barn." 

Last night I went to the Schoharie County Fair with my husband and youngest--Demo Derby! Royal Hannaford Circus! Gaudy rides! Crazy carnival eats! And all the joys of beribboned rabbits and hares, cows and sheep and friendly goats.

CHARIS IN THE WORLD OF WONDERS, AGAIN

Hurrah for a lovely new review from Sarah Collister at The North American Anglican. I'm grateful that this book, launched in the most uncertain part of the pandemic, is still receiving reviews two years on.

Sample clip:

Youmans takes readers on a triumphant yet honest journey from death to new life in the ten chapters of her luminous novel.

I had the hardest time reviewing this book because every time I picked up to work on the review, I ended up getting lost in the narrative once again. Though the themes of this tale are quite serious ‒ death, loss, and new life ‒ Youmans’ prose is still dazzling and joyful, repeating the profound Biblical metaphor that darkness often brings further illumination to the light.

For the whole review, go HERE.

Art by Clive Hicks-Jenkins
Find him at hicks-jenkins.com

SEREN OF THE WILDWOOD

The poem has been typeset, two of three requested blurb comments are already in, and I need to make a list of places that or people who might be interested in reviewing for Wiseblood Books. Clive Hicks-Jenkins will be at work on the illumination this fall. They typeset version looks highly symmetrical and handsome, as each little section is blank verse followed by bob-and-wheel.

OTHER WORDISH NEWS

Poems are coming out here and there... 

I've agreed to be on the judging panel for a national poetry award. And that's a bit insane, as life is overly busy already. But I should learn a thing or two.

And there's this splashy event: Makoto Fujimura's latest book, Art and Faith, was an inspiration for Holy Ground, premiered recently at our own Glimmerglass Opera, and I was invited by Mako to the pre-opera picnic and premier. It's always lovely to see him, but I also got to meet his new wife, Haejin Shim Fujimura (co-founder of Embers International), as well as Holy Ground's librettist Lila Palmer and composer Damien Geter, and Lila's composer husband Josh Palmer. 

The other side of the table...
Damien Geter, Lila Palmer, Makoto Fujimura

NCLR: Night-blooming Cereus, Spring Tree Egg, Alice

From a recent North Carolina Literary Review zoom reading: three of my poems from a wild-and-free sequence influenced by the paralIelism of Hebrew poetry (via the lovely rhythms of the King James Bible) and a Yoruban form. Yep, a real Silk Road set of poems... And not formal in the way you may associate with my poems.

I never watch myself, so I can't make any promises...

Otherworlds

                                                      

Amethyst Review

New Writing Engaging with the Sacred

Fly to "Otherworlds"