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For many years, Pentacle Magazine had a very popular page called The Bards Page. This showcased Pagan poetry and featured the best Pagan poets in the country. There was a wide selection of excellent verse, all Pagan-themed. Reading verse is a joy, an experience. Good Pagan poetry places you in a different world. Mandrake of Oxford has now brought this diverse Pagan-themed verse together in book form for you to enjoy.

64pp pbk £9.99

Pagan Poetry An Introduction

Pagan Poetry
An Introduction

Step into the world of Pagan poetry, poems of nature, the wildlife,
sacred sites, Gods and Goddesses, Mother Earth, the Wheel of the Year, animals, swans, polar bears, birds, the seasons of the year.
This is the world of verse. Your imagination alights. New worlds appear. Poetry is a vast subject, as old as history and older.
Poetry is thought to have belonged to ritual in early agricultural societies, and poetry in particular, it has been claimed, arose at first in the form of magical spells recited to ensure a good harvest.
Poetry is an ancient Pagan art. It is taken from the Greek word poiesis, “making” and is a form of literary art that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, literal or surface-level meanings.
The earliest poetry is believed to have been recited or sung, employed as a way of remembering oral history, genealogy, and law.
Early Pagan poetry includes Old English poems like Beowulf, Deor, The Wanderer, and The Seafarer. These poems are characterised by their celebration of heroism, courage, and loyalty.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is the oldest long poem in history. An ancient Babylonian poem about a mighty hero who tried to become immortal, its universal themes of love, life and death resonate as clearly today as in antiquity.
The poet T S Elliot had a wonderful description of poetry as “Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.’’
Edgar Alan Poe described it as “A poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul.”
Plato said, “Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.”
The poet Shelly had an amazingly evocative description of poetry, “Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.”
The poets who all appeared in Pentacle, composed inspiring Pagan verse. Theres a wide variety of Pagan verse. Mervyn Linford’s poems evoke a Pagan world of nature, and birds, and wildlife.
Another remarkable and evocative Pagan Poet is Geoffrey Winch. Geoffrey’s poems evoke the mystery of Pagan Sacred Sites.
John Neville Jarrett Pagan poetry is evocative. It describes a world of nature, the seasons, birds and the Pagan wheel of the year, and the danger of wildlife becoming extinct.
Richard Bonfield poems, are descriptive and Pagan themed. Again the verse is used as a warning to the dangers of ignoring climate change and the effects that it is having.
Then we have Stormwatch Druid, Stephen Jeal. He brings the Pagan wheel of the year, a cycle of eight festivals that mark the seasons and solar events, to life.
Shanta Achayra poems about nature and the joys of life.
Dr Kevin Manwaring amazing poems about the joys of autumn.
This is the Pagan world, brought to life in verse. In our modern world, with nature and wildlife in danger, and the threat of global warming, it is so important that we are reminded of our wonderful inheritance, and our duty to preserve it.
Pentacle Magazine always supported Pagan poetry, its Bards page was very popular, and I am delighted to be able to bring the Pagan world to a new audience.
There is a wonderful history of Pagan poetry, and modern Pagan poetry continues to inspire. Read, and be absorbed into a different Pagan world. Poetry brings the Pagan world to life. It is inspiring.
Marion Pearce
2025

Mervyn Linford
A Rich Preserve
Robin
Heavenwards
May The Fifth
Fields Of Flax
Wounds And Lotions
Homes Without A Hearth

Geoffrey Winch
Chanctonbury Ring
Time Waits For Some Stones
Kingarth Stones, Isle of Bute
Arriving Here

John Neville Jarrett
English Temples And English Prayers
Greening The Town
Little Bird
Summer Solstice, 2014
Pink Sun Rising
This One Is Now Extinct
Greening The Town

Richard Bonfield
Whooper Swans: The Secret Gospel Of Oengus And Yewbury
Do Not Go Gently
Swift

Stormwatch Druid Stephen Jeal
Waiting For Imbolc
Onset Of Spring
Beltane
To Summer
Autumn Time Is Here
Samhain’s Mystical Call – An Autumn Trilogy
October
The Shortest Day
Dawn Chorus
Spring Beckons

Shanta Achayra
Boxing Day
Here, Now
Hunger
Nothing More Real Than You
Inside One’s Own Singing

Dr Kevin Manwaring
Breaking Light – Part 1-5