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A nameless young man finds himself wandering half-naked through the frozen wintry Bristol night, when he falls – or is he pushed…? – into the river and is washed out to sea. Arriving lost and exhausted upon a strange island enmisted, he comes to a fortress which holds a lithe, enchanted-but-broken, eternal youth in chains, who tries to kill him. It is only through sharing stories of his life that he is able to avert the youth's wrath at being disturbed, easing his traumatised heart by offering him something no other visitor to this dark place has ever given him: presence, and care. This unearthly mythical narrative becomes the poetic frame story by which Bruce, the nameless wanderer, u...
A nameless young man finds himself wandering half-naked through the frozen wintry Bristol night, when he falls - or is he pushed...? - into the river and is washed out to sea. Arriving lost and exhausted upon a strange island enmisted, he comes to a fortress which holds a lithe, enchanted-but-broken, eternal youth in chains, who tries to kill him. It is only through sharing stories of his life that he is able to avert the youth's wrath at being disturbed, easing his traumatised heart by offering him something no other visitor to this dark place has ever given him: presence, and care. This unearthly mythical narrative becomes the poetic frame story by which Bruce, the nameless wanderer, unfol...
Iceland is often labelled ‘a land of ice and fire’ – these days it has become something of a cliché – but when artist and poet Bruce Rimell visited with his husband in 2023, he felt plunged into a world of blood and honey, a place of poetry and song, recalling the Old Norse mythic images, as well as the magma which underlies and sculpts the vistas of this volcanic country… “to which I will say: I am a poet, I pray to waterfalls, let it outpour like rain…” Simultaneously a journey through Iceland’s natural, cultural and human landscapes, as well as a dreaming fall into the frenetic soul of a hyperactive poet, ‘Bloodhoney Songs’ takes in scenes from Reykjavik, ekphrastic...
What do you do when life seems overwhelming, the world seems alienating and physical injury has become debilitating? For artist and poet Bruce Rimell, the answer was to turn away from the world, and to seek solace in landscape, astronomy and poetry. Written over a period of four years, ‘Wanderer: Songs of Solitude, Fragility, and Change’ emerged from this challenging time: the poetry addresses grief and memory, as well as slow-burn changes in the course of a human life. It mourns the passing of a once-cherished friendship, stands in sorrow before waterfalls, celebrates the passing of the seasons visible in the natural world. Framed as a journey across the heavens, the collection is inter...
What would a positive, life-affirming, cosmos-embracing and transcendent Queer mythology look like? In the years 2013-15, artist and poet Bruce Rimell got a chance to find out when he was invited to participate in a collaborative project to create an international art publication, ‘The Encyclopaedia of Fernal Affairs’. Although this was principally an art-oriented initiative, Bruce quickly went off on his own tangent, inventing a complete constructed language and two song-cycles of fernal mythology which resonated with his own burgeoning sense of his Queer identity. ‘The Fernal Songs’ are the shimmering results of that literary side project. Centred around Lucaion, a Queer Hero whose...
The first practical guide to the transformative uses of salvia • Explains how salvia connects you with your higher purpose and aids you in envisioning your unique path in life • Describes appropriate methods of use, a shamanic diet to increase effectiveness, and the meaning of the symbols experienced during salvia’s ecstatic embrace • Explores recent clinical research into salvia’s long-term positive psychological effects and its potential as a treatment for Alzheimer’s, depression, and addiction Salvia divinorum has been used since ancient times by the Mazatec shamans of Mexico for divination, vision quests, and healing. Known by many names--nearly all associated with the Virgin...
The art and iconography of the Minoan civilisation of Bronze Age Crete is rightly described as having a refreshing vitality with a fortunate combination of stylisation and spontaneity in which the artist is able to transform conventional imagery into a personal expression. The dynamism, torsion and naturalism evident in Minoan art stands in stark contrast to the hieratic rigidity of other ancient civilisations, and nowhere is this more apparent than in the iconography of the Minoan Epiphany, a set of mainly glyptic (rings, seals, and seal impression) images which appear to depict religious celebrants experiencing direct and seemingly ecstatic encounters with deities. This collection of essay...
In 2021, British artist Bruce Rimell realised that he had also been a poet for much longer than he had been an artist, and decided to bring this other creative practice into the foreground. Delving through his many collections of poetry, he began to publish the best as part of a small series of books. However, some of his unpublished collections were of much lower quality, yet contained within them what he felt were occasional shards of beautiful light. He decided to gather these disparate poems into a single volume of assorted works. This retrospective book is the result, mapping the transformations of Bruce's poetic voice over nearly thirty years, from formative and youthful compositions i...
In the late 1990s, artist and poet Bruce Rimell travelled halfway across the world to live and work in Japan. There in his new home city of Uji, just south of Kyoto, he discovered a wonderful new world of Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, as well as evocative myths and folktales, beautiful rivers and forested mountains. Losing himself in this ancient landscape, where the Uji River emerges from the mountains into a picturesque cultural scene, he soon discovered the traditional Japanese artform of the 短歌 tanka, the ‘short song’ arranged in five lines of 5-7-5-7-7 syllables, and he began writing these brief poems to reflect upon his emotional life, and to note his personal impression...
The use of psychedelic drugs plants is rising, and with it the number of reports narrating encounters with otherworldly visionary beings. Approaches to these experiences have often been literal, archetypal or dismissive. Evolutionary psychology and the cognitive science of religion suggest innate and non-imagistic mental foundations for these phenomena arising from easily-triggered evolutionary functions during emotive periods of high cognitive demand. Such functions include agent detection, social intelligence faculties and metacognition. This wide-ranging book explores how our deepest mental processes predispose us as humans to believe in supernatural agents, and presents a new hypothesis of how these same cognitions facilitate the emergence of those agents to become present when psychedelic drugs and plants are ingested. Bruce concludes that visionary beings shimmer within as awe-inspiring products of the mind, an experience which rests at the heart of what it is to be human.