Divinations VII: Bones, Bergs, & the Oracular Season Finale

“It's very prismatic in and of itself, because you keep returning to it, and you keep turning it to look at it a different way.”

Welcome back to our seventh and final episode of the Divinations miniseries, featuring an ongoing conversation in poems with poet Sandra Yannone.

In this episode, I share my poem-in-progress, "Sortition," inspired by Sandy's "By Years the Obstacles, at Night the Scars" from Episode 6: Bolts, Friendly Ghosts, & the Opportunity to Tilt, as well as by the Little Oracles poetic fragment “bone.”

Sortition
by Allison Arth | A work-in-progress poem

A woman opens her hand to reveal the key on her palm: a tattoo.
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A sparrow holds seeds in her mouth by the bone in her tongue: a revelation.

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A woman holds bones in the palm of her hand: the skull of a sparrow revealed like a delicate seed, like a lonesome tattoo, like an open mouth, like a tongue intoning, like a secret key to some indelible virtue.

We talk about skeletal neomorphs and personal specters, jury duty in 6th-century Athens, lexical campfires, and more. We also reflect on the project as a whole: how it’s affected us, and how engaging in this kind of project, process, and practice can impact creatives and their communities, too. And, as with Episode 6, Sandy shares another special reading from her upcoming collection, The Glass Studio: the truly beautiful "Oracle," a perfect series send-off if ever there was one. You can find the full episode transcript here.

This is not only our final episode of the Divinations miniseries, but also our final episode of 2023! Thank you all for being here, week after week. While we’re on break, you can find every episode of the podcast collected and collated in the archive.

Happy New Year, and ‘til next time, as always: take care, keep creating, and stay divine! <3

xx, aa