Gremlin Grimoire is the title of the newest anthology from strange Quark Press. Their website is arresting!
I had stumbled across Strange quark in my online wanderings, a happily unexpected discovery. There was something new and different about it which appealed to me. The header on the home page is a great introduction to the publisher’s aims: “Strange Quark Press is an indie magazine for science-themed writing, science fiction, and speculative fiction and whatever weird stuff you come up with. The world of schooling and academia that many of us pass through and inhabit often feels stifling …” Magic and imagination provide leys that open doors to real learning.
I was curious and ventured in. Submissions were open!
The genre of Strange Quark is generally speculative fiction, including a broad church of magical realism, adventures in consciousness, the quixotic and weird, with hints of the Gothic. Most literary forms including poetry and short stories are all welcome.
The Zoom Launch
The editor, Ryan Walraven, is a fascinating character, as I was to discover at the Zoom Launch held to celebrate the anthology’s release. He invited each one of us to read our work in the limited time available – a slick 45 minutes! His personality radiated an indefinable offbeat quality, someone who definitely blazed his own trail and didn’t care too much about literary fashions or social media. Here was someone who knew his own mind and trusted his literary instincts.
Only ten authors have their work in this collection – I was most fortunate to be one of them. It may have been the obscure nature of the theme presented in the submission call which attracted limited numbers. Or it may have been the editor’s eye for bold individuality, I couldn’t gauge. What he has curated is a deliciously original and discerning mix of poetry and short stories.
The Zoom launch celebrated the anthology’s printed release. It is available on Amazon worldwide.
About Gremlin Grimoire
Ryan Walraven’s own words describe the anthology best:
“Gremlin Grimoire is a human-created collection of poems and stories that wanders from the ghoulish to the surreal. Across these pages, ten imaginative authors and one discerning cat offer their strange, searching takes on our theme.
Inside, ancient questions mingle with ethereal frequencies. Dangerous spell books collide with troubled relationships. The moon, naturally, makes an appearance, alongside psychedelic revelations, lingering shadows, and encounters that may leave reality feeling slightly less dependable.”
I had only one poem to offer which was close to the theme of spells and the surreal, and that was The Cabinet of the Bones. I was waiting for the right publisher to give this work a home. And he appeared!
Gremlin Grimoire was initially published on the website.
My poem can be read here.
Gremlin Grimoire Hits X
I had posted news of the publication on X quite a while after the anthology appeared. In spite the tardiness on my part (I had been absent from social media), I received an eye-catching response from Mr Nga, one of the few accounts on X who actively engages with me.
”A dark star scrying the earth”
Mr Nga captures the first two stanzas perfectly in this amazing image.
The Cabinet of the Bones
The Triumph of Light Over Darkness
At the Zoom meeting, I somehow knew that Ryan would ask us about the ideas behind our work – I intuited he would ask me what the Cabinet of the Bones signified. I replied, “Essentially, it’s an exorcism.” The first two stanzas paint a dark scene, but the ‘man unbound’ appears in the last stanza, liberated from dark rites which had kept his soul captive in death. Thus he becomes like the sun.
Still abuzz after the Zoom readings, we all communicated enthusiastically with Ryan and one another by email. I had written to one of the authors, Julia Lymperopoulou, “… but I believe writing and poetry have healing, as your work shows.”
Pain and Life are the Coal of Creation
She replied, “And your poem is healing as well! I truly enjoyed it, along with all the images and emotions that surfaced while you were reading! Pain and life are the coal of creation, as they confront us with ourselves. I have written poems dedicated to my late mother as well. It is comforting, as much as it can be. And a channel even poetry could be to communicate with a different dimension.”
Beautifully stated and true.
Read the full poem here.