PantheaCon 2012 part deux, and a new book

Here's the joint session proposal involving myself and Finnchuill of Finchuill's Mast:

The Vision Poet

Poets have held roles as seers and visionaries in many archaic and traditional cultures worldwide, performing and practicing as intermediaries with the sacred. In the modern era, certain poets reclaimed/reinvented the poetry of the see-er, including Arthur Rimbaud, the Surrealists, and later the Beats. Today some of us are reconstructing archaic seer-poet traditions like that of Gaelic filidecht, along with working within the modern visionary poet lineages mentioned. Listen to two poets, Erynn Rowan Laurie and Michael Routery, talk about these practices. Writing exercises will follow, so bring something to write with.

I'd also like to announce that my article "Since Feathers Have Grown on My Body: Madness, Art, and Healing in Celtic Reconstructionist Spirituality" will be published in Disability and Religious Diversity: Cross-Cultural and Interreligious Perspectives. It is due to be released by Palgrave Macmillan on October 25th. Sadly, they've misspelled my name on the web page, and I fear they may have done so in the book as well, but I emailed the editors today to (once again) ask that they spell my name correctly. We'll see what happens.

Despite the misspelling, I'm very excited by this publication. The anthology is from an academic publisher and should bring some attention to the CR community and our theologies from the academic community. My article addresses the geilt phenomenon and its similarities to manifestations of post-traumatic stress disorder in veterans and others, taking examples from Irish, Welsh and other literatures and discussing some of my own experiences as a veteran and how the geilta have been a helpful model to me for examining my own issues with disability and "madness."

In connection with this article, I was asked to speak on this topic at an upcoming University of Washington class on "Medicine, Illness, and Culture," being taught by a friend of mine. I'm looking forward to this opportunity. It will not be the first time I've spoken on PTSD, but it will be the first time I've spoken outside of a Pagan context about the geilt connection. It will, however, be the first time this article will be used in a classroom setting as study material, which I also find very exciting.