The Winter Wizard by Sam Retallick
Broken Sleep Books
Published 31st August 2025.
Sam Retallick”s The Winter Wizard is a folkloric sequence that blends whimsy, melancholy, and myth in an imaginative coming-of-age narrative. Set in a liminal landscape of moor, woodland, and sea, the poem conjures a dreamlike Cornwall populated by magical figures, talking bobbins, and vanished saints. Through deceptively simple language and shifting forms, Retallick explores grief, seasonal transition, and queer self-invention with a lyrical clarity that holds both humour and tenderness. The result is a strange and quietly moving mythopoeic tale shaped by place, magic, and memory. PRAISE for The Winter Wizard: I was moved and delighted by this one-of-a-kind folkloric marvel. — Isabel Waidner
Sam Retallick”s The Winter Wizard is a folkloric sequence that blends whimsy, melancholy, and myth in an imaginative coming-of-age narrative. Set in a liminal landscape of moor, woodland, and sea, the poem conjures a dreamlike Cornwall populated by magical figures, talking bobbins, and vanished saints. Through deceptively simple language and shifting forms, Retallick explores grief, seasonal transition, and queer self-invention with a lyrical clarity that holds both humour and tenderness. The result is a strange and quietly moving mythopoeic tale shaped by place, magic, and memory. PRAISE for The Winter Wizard: I was moved and delighted by this one-of-a-kind folkloric marvel. — Isabel Waidner
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