One Night Stanzas

Toil & Trouble: Towards A Responsible Witchcraft, ed. Dr Alice Tarbuck & Dr Claire Askew
Call for Papers

In 2018, we (Drs Alice Tarbuck and Claire Askew) created the six-week short course Toil & Trouble: Towards A Responsible Witchcraft, in response to the explosion of witchcraft themes and aesthetics in fashion, popular culture and on social media. We welcomed this growing interest in witchcraft and magic, but were troubled by some of the unexamined witch-related content we were seeing. Too often, depictions of witches – and indeed some contemporary witchcraft practices – perpetuate harmful racist, colonialist and culturally appropriative narratives. Gender essentialism crops up often in witchcraft circles. The proliferation by large companies and mass media of witchcraft as a trend (“#witchgoals”) raises troubling questions about the relationship between witchcraft and capitalism, and the effects of witchcraft practices on our natural world. The Toil & Trouble course sought to contexualise the contemporary witch-aesthetic boom by examining the witch’s long, fraught history; and by teaching simple, ethical witchcraft practices to those interested in a more responsible witchcraft.

Two years on, we want to create an anthology of essays on the subject of responsible witchcraft in the contemporary world. We want to collate a broad, diverse and much-needed resource by gathering submissions from experts and long term practitioners. We will prioritise submissions from Black and Indigenous writers, writers of colour, LGBTQIA+ writers, disabled writers, working class writers, and anyone who lives and works at the intersections between these. We encourage you to interpret “witchcraft” broadly: it is intended as a catch-all term encompassing occult practices and magics of all kinds. You will find a non-exhaustive list of suggested topics below.

Publication and fees:

We are currently seeking a publisher for this anthology, and cannot at this stage guarantee a specific fee. However, we will not be asking anyone to contribute for free, and will not enter into a publishing contract unless a fee for contributors is guaranteed. We hope that the book will be produced in print by a traditional publisher – please note that this is not a crowdfunding project.

To submit:

Please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words by 23rd October 2020 by email to asktoilandtrouble@gmail.com
Full essays will not be sought until such time as a publisher comes on board. We will ensure that selected contributors are given at least four weeks’ notice of the deadline for final submissions.

Suggested topics:

– Witchcraft and race
– Witchcraft and cultural appropriation / colonialism
– Witchcraft and class
– Witchcraft and disability
– Witchcraft and the environment
– Witchcraft and gender
– Witchcraft and mental health / self care
– Witchcraft and capitalism
– Witchcraft and bodies / the body / the Body Politic
– Witchcraft and social media

About the editors:

Dr Alice Tarbuck is the author of A Spell in the Wild: A Year and Six Centuries of Magic (Two Roads, 2020), the poetry collection Grid and an academic based in Edinburgh. Her work on witchcraft has been featured in 404 Ink’s Nasty Women, the Dangerous Women Project, and she runs Toil and Trouble, a witchcraft course. She has been invited to speak on witchcraft as feminist practice by the Magickal Women Conference, Scottish PEN and by Freedom TV. Additionally, she has taught workshops for the National Library of Scotland, the Scottish Poetry Library and further afield. When she was born, a white wizard came to her house to bless her, and this, she suspects, is where the trouble started.

Dr Claire Askew is a writer, teacher and solitary witch. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the University of Edinburgh, and has been a Jessie Kesson Fellow and the University of Edinburgh Writer in Residence. Her books include the poetry collection This changes things (Bloodaxe, 2016), creative writing guide Novelista (John Murray, 2020), and the award-winning novel All The Hidden Truths (Hodder & Stoughton, 2018). She has written about witchcraft and witchcraft history for The Dangerous Women Project, Amelia’s Magazine and The Herald, among others.

^ The Forest Cafe’s current location, photographed by me in 2014.

Hello friends!

One of the few nice happenings of the past few weeks is this: I recently became a trustee of Forest, the legendary arts co-operative that’s been providing grassroots support for artists and writers in Edinburgh since 2000. If you’ve been around for ages, then you’ll remember me talking about how important Forest is here. If it weren’t for Forest and the bloody fantastic poet and all-round excellent human Ryan Van Winkle (one of its founding directors), I might never have made it in the weird and wild world of writing!

Part of my trustee role has been revitalising Forest Publishing, the publishing arm of the collective, in time to celebrate Forest’s 20th birthday. I’m delighted to say that the first of a series of anniversary publications is going to be an anthology of creative writing by… well, anyone. That means YOU, if you’d like to submit! All the details are below and you get one month to perfect your poems, stories, or flash pieces.

I look forward to reading your work! :)

Forest Publishing

Call for submissions: Forest 20/20/20

Forest is 20 in 2020! As part of the birthday celebrations, Forest Publishing will create a series of DIY chapbooks full of poems, stories, flash and artwork. These will be limited edition publications, hand made in short runs and produced as a series so readers can eventually collect them all!

Our first chapbook will be an anthology of poetry, flash and stories.

Submissions are open to absolutely everyone!

Send us your previously unpublished / un-broadcast writing on the theme of PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE.

Interpret the theme however you like!

There’s no limit on word or line count, but we may favour shorter pieces in order to fit more good stuff in our chapbook.

We are particularly keen to receive submissions from Black and indigenous writers, writers of colour, LGBTQIA+ writers and disabled writers.

Send your submissions to forestpublishing20@gmail.com by 5pm on Friday 31st July

What is Forest?

We are a volunteer-run, collectively-owned, free arts and events project that has existed in Edinburgh (and elsewhere) since 2000. We run a free-to-access café/gallery/performance space for people to get involved in any creative activity imaginable. Our events have included music, theatre, dancing, yoga, massage, poetry recitals, art displays, knit-ins, book tours, language teaching, monsterbike making…and plenty more. We’re always on the lookout for new events and ideas, even when they take us to space.

Our aims are:

To enable greater access to all forms of the performing arts

To provide opportunities to learn and develop skills

To increase access to art

To facilitate the development of artists’ work and skills

To build co-operation and cultural understanding

Find out more at theforest.org.uk and on #Forest202020

Making It Home brought together many nationalities and cultures: the women hailed from places like Algeria, Kosovo, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Iraq and Ghana, as well as Scotland, England and Ireland. What could all these very different women possibly have in common? The answer soon became clear: they all wanted to tell their stories of home.

Last week I wrote a blogpost for my lovely employers, Scottish Book Trust, about the Making It Home project. Why? Well partly because — as you probably know if you read this blog — I think MiH is an incredibly exciting project and everyone ought to know about it. But also because MiH was all about telling stories about home, and specifically, what it means to call Scotland home. And that’s exactly what SBT’s public participation campaign for 2014 is all about.

It’s called Scotland’s Stories of Home, and we want to hear the story of YOUR home in Scotland, whether you’re originally from here or you just moved here recently. You can write about anything, from the four walls you live in to the food smells that automatically make you think “Scotland”; from a distant childhood memory to a funny story you just heard last week. If it means “home” to you, we want to hear it. You don’t have to be a professional writer — the complete opposite, in fact! You just have to have a cool tale to tell. If you think this sounds like you, submit your story of home here, and you could be featured in the newspaper, on our website, or even in our Stories of Home book!

The deadline for SSoH submissions is 30th June. But wait… before you run off and submit, go and read the rest of my blogpost!

Pre-Genesis

Seven grey and rainy days
And no one to say It is good.
The backyard smells swampy
The mosquitoes are forming posses
And sunlight sends postcards saying
Wish you were here.
Meanwhile we wait for a change
For brighter and clearer and knowing.
These days, though, do fit my waiting mood.
For waiting is neither light nor dark
But somewhere in between
A dim room before the switch
The refrigerator as the door unsticks
The filled mailbox while the hinge squeaks.
Answers and arrivals have strong color—are vivid and loud
But waiting is like these seven grey and rainy days
And now I invite the sunshine and the changes in,
So God and I can say, Let there be light.
And my mud is like Adam’s, ready for a bite of knowledge.

Daniel Dowe is a high school English teacher with a Ph.D. in English and American Literature. He is from a big family. He likes old movies and red wine and talking.

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Want to see YOUR poem featured on ONS? Read this post first: submission guidelines are at the bottom. Good luck!

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You can also visit Read This Press for more poetry (and typewriter paraphernalia!). Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, our sister site. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!

(Photo credit)