During my recovery from the ectopic pregnancy I had lots of time to myself.

I was unable to dance or crouch over a canvas to paint. But I could sit up with lots of pillows to write and submit poetry to sites to see if my poetry is good enough to be published.

Pressure Cooker Literary where among the first to publish one of my poems!

After about 40 rejections from other sites, Pressure Cooker Literary emailed me to tell me they had published The Priestess of Perdition!

They are an international poetry and literary magazine based in Pakistan.

The Priestess of Perdition is part of a poetic project where I write 13 poems about 13 women in my life who embody the priestess archetype in this modern world.

In ancient cultures around the world, they had priestesses in temples. Such important women in society but we only know of them as voices for the gods. Who were these women? Did they have lives, lovers, hobbies, favourite colours and more?

In this project I bring the ancient to the contemporary. These priestesses add their ordinary to their potions and magical to their blue jeans.

They have grit, tragic stories, heartache, dreams, premonitions and ceremonies.

They cast spells in coffee, they become the weather, they scry in swimming pools.

This particular Priestess feels watery and ghost-like. The poem is formatted as though a diary or she’s speaking aloud how she feels.

Have a read here: The Priestess of Perdition