A Wheel of Ravens

ADAM BOLIVAR is a formal poet of dark fantasy, a weird fiction writer and a playwright for marionettes with a particular interest in balladry, alliterative verse and "Jack" tales. He is the author of The Lay of Old Hex (Hippocampus Press, 2017), The Ettinfell of Beacon Hill (Jackanapes Press, 2021) and Ballads for the Witching Hour (Hippocampus Press 2022). A second volume of his occult detective Ettinfell saga is due out from Jackanapes Press in 2024 and third is forthcoming. A marionette-maker, he has written and performed in several original marionette plays performed by puppet troupes in Boston, Berkeley, Portland and Salem, Oregon. A native of gambrel-roofed Boston, Massachusetts, he now resides in the gloomy dreamlands of Portland, Oregon with his golden-haired wife and son.

A wheel of ravens revelled loudlyOver a bitter battle of bold fightersWho lost their lives and lay in mudA feast of flesh for the frenzied birds...From Adam Bolivar, balladeer extraordinaire and author of The Ettinfell of Beacon Hill, comes a landmark volume of poetry that harkens back to the adventurous myths of the Anglo-Saxons and the Dark Ages...Alliterative verse was the traditional poetic form used in Old English poems such as Beowulf and The Wanderer, as well as in Old Norse sagas and the Poetic Edda of the Icelanders. Outlawed by the Normans as a symbol of nativist rebellion after their conquest of England in the year 1066, this ancient form is now all but forgotten. A Wheel of Ravens is the first ever collection of original verse written in the Old English alliterative style. Braiding together threads of early English paganism, folkloric elements-including a speculative pre-history of the storytelling tradition of Jack Tales-and the dream-cycle of H. P. Lovecraft, Adam Bolivar offers an intricate poetic tapestry bursting with myth and story, as unique as it is remarkable.This groundbreaking work will surely be of great interest to fans of Seamus Heaney's Beowulf: A New Verse Translation and Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology. With a foreword by Dennis Wilson Wise (a noted authority on Tolkien and epic fantasy), an introduction by the author, and a useful glossary. Richly illustrated with images of Anglo-Saxon artifacts, artwork and more.