A Ride Through Faerie & Other Poems is Clay Franklin Johnson’s debut collection of poetry in honor of John Keats on the bicentennial year of his tragic death in 1821. Clay’s poems, influenced by the darker side of Romanticism, capture atmospheres of nightmarish dreamscapes, often easing broodingly into “night-worlds” of otherworldly beauty, painting phantasmal scenes of visionary imagery, vivid with wondrous landscapes of the supernatural sublime, alive with “night-creatures” that exist in duality between dark and light, between death and life, and between this world and what waits on the other side. Clay’s poetry is obsessive, haunted by phantasms, ghosts of guilt, regret, longing, memories of lost loved ones, and possesses a particular penchant for that brooding, melancholy aesthetic of Gothic literature. The collection is passionately inspired by Clay’s travels, containing poems of night-wanderings among the Gothic ruins of Whitby Abbey, a piece of macabre decadence written during a cold winter living in Edinburgh, and even a spiritual retelling of the faery Mélusine inspired by a Shelleyan sort of illusion upon the enchanted waters of Asturian seas that whispers with illusory voices and hallucinatory madness. Clay has collaborated with the artist Eli John who has produced evocative illustrations for leading genre publishers in both the US and UK. Eli’s stunning artwork in this collection, created by densely layering elements of photography, traditional drawing, painting, and collage, has brought brilliant visual illustration to Clay’s poetry, capturing haunting atmospheres and night-worlds in poems such as “Lines Written by Moonlight at Whitby Abbey”, “The Fires of Ecstasy at Samhuinn”, “My Little Green Secret”, and “Edinburgh Ecstasies”.

A Ride Through Faerie & Other Poems is Clay Franklin Johnson’s debut collection of poetry in honor of John Keats on the bicentennial year of his tragic death in 1821. Clay’s poems, influenced by the darker side of Romanticism, capture atmospheres of nightmarish dreamscapes, often easing broodingly into “night-worlds” of otherworldly beauty, painting phantasmal scenes of visionary imagery, vivid with wondrous landscapes of the supernatural sublime, alive with “night-creatures” that exist in duality between dark and light, between death and life, and between this world and what waits on the other side.

Hekate and Diana. Odin and Apollo. Freyja and the Witch-Lord. Eternal Haunted Summer was born in the late summer of 2009. It was created as a place where Pagans and polytheists and witches (and non-Pagans with a love of the old myths) could feature their short stories and poems and essays with those of a like mind and similar beliefs and practices. EHS has grown steadily over the years, due entirely to the wonderful contributors whose works fill its digital pages. Without their creativity and talent, EHS would not exist; it would have disappeared long ago. This thirteenth anniversary edition is a celebration of their work. I love every piece that appears in Eternal Haunted Summer, and I just wish that I could have included them all here. These poems, essays, and short stories range from tragic to triumphant, from exciting to despairing, from comic to horrific, from grotesque to sensual, from erotic to subtle; here you will find odes to terrible Gods, exciting tales of adventure, melancholy meditations on creation, and wonderings at the nature of human and divine hearts. These are the best of Eternal Haunted Summer. I hope that you find them as inspiring as I do.