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High Priestesses of Poetry Volume I (2018) is a 196 page paperback anthology featuring more than 65 poems by Ash Good, Gabrielle Hancher, Jenn LaLime, K.M. Lighthouse, Holaday Mason, Beth Melnick, Rhonda Nichols, Lauren Paredes and Dawn Thompson.

Meeting online on the eves of each equinox and solstice, High Priestesses of Poetry is a coven of storytellers gathering to conjure the magic of our collective pasts and projections of the future. We meet as equals honoring all human lineages and use seasonal inspiration to write into our utopias. In our circles, we share original poetry and create healing poetry in community as we time travel across the year.

From the introduction:

We find ourselves in the midst of an upside-down and misdirected epoch, so even more dire is the call to rise as our own healers, consecrate our existence by making art in community and grow our own utopias. High Priestesses of Poetry came to me in a vision—a journey of word channeled and spoken in fellowship that would offer a renewed wholeness to those who circled to play. 

In my utopia we are the story tellers who gather to ring our voices in truth and love to heal one another. We own our privileges and protect the knowledge of our collective pasts. We pre-tend the future with sustainable practices that respect all human lineages and the timeless wisdom of plant, animal, mineral and space bodies. We are present—the time markers of breathing seasons. We know ourselves as speakers of magic who conjure laughter, tears and remembrance. When we offer our witness to intuitive intelligence, we are High Priestesses.

When I shared this vision with my writing community, astounding women heeded the call. We gathered in online ritual as a coven without walls on the Spring Equinox, Summer Solstice, Fall Equinox and Winter Solstice in 2018. 

These seasonal circles became a potent threshold for spiritual osmosis. What we experienced in the outer world was pulled in as source material, digested and witnessed. What we created in our inner sanctuary nourished our emerging relationships, inspired our craft and reflected meaning back out into our lives.  

The pages of this anthology will be unable to fully capture the spectrum of alchemy that we experienced, but the stories offered here are powerful testaments in their own right. I chose to order our poems by the moods of the Moon, our great sky reminder that there is a right time and place for all things. You may notice how our voices breath into one another in the tides of inspiration that push and pull through this body of writing, offering affirmation that in the faceted surfaces of others’ stories, we can find a mirror to our own stories. 

May this sharing of our play, of our circle’s story, in some way point you toward the power and possibility of staking claim to your own utopias, of finding your people.  

To my dearest High Priestesses: my deepest gratitude to each of you for arriving in the right time and place to so generously offer the unearthed diamonds of your stories and claim your place in the co-creation of this magic. I am awed to know your poetic voices in this dimension. May you continually share your light and intuition where it is respected and honored in this world.  •

—Ash Good
Initiatrix, High Priestesses of Poetry