Wednesday, 20 November 2024

Fiona Theokritoff, "New Uses for a Wand"



Fiona Theokritoff is a poet and educator, with a science background. She lives in Nottinghamshire, and has worked as a Creative Writing tutor since 2017. She did her Creative Writing MA at Nottingham Trent University in 2019, and as one half of Wine and Words, she performs her work at book festivals and other book events across Nottinghamshire. In the 1980s, Fiona studied Ecology and Environmental Science, and went on to have careers in publishing and as a health practitioner. Her first book, New Uses for a Wand, was published in June 2024 by Five Leaves. Her work has appeared in poetry journals including Mslexia, The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar, Ink Sweat and Tears and Consilience, a journal created to forge connections between the sciences and creative arts.



About New Uses for a Wand, by Fiona Theokritoff 
New Uses for a Wand is a book about transformation, from the way our world has transformed myths and old magic into science, to the transformations that we as humans experience: those we reach for and those that are thrust upon us. 

In this wide-ranging pamphlet there are poems about lapis lazuli, the Periodic Table, the James Webb Space Telescope, and about people being in love, growing old, facing loss and taking revenge.     

You can read more about New Uses for a Wand on the publisher’s website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection.


From New Uses for a Wand

The One Thing Brian Cox Taught Me

At the outer edges of our eyeballs,
184 million rod cells stand
ready for this low-light moment.

We are seeing stars.

The tiny lights hover,
we are bathed in photon streams,
two lovers full of whispered dreams,

starlight from faraway and forever

        star light
          star bright
        shine on my retina
                  tonight

A 13 billion light-year journey ends,
illuminates us   with a flash
of rhodopsin       workaday magic.

Ancient light is
        perceived,
        captured,
        persists,
                dances
            free in our eyes,

answering the lovers’ eternal question…
so it is true, that nothing        in this moment
has existed        in quite this way before.

Photosynthesis

          Magnesium  - Mg2+ - activates enzymes in phosphate metabolism. 
          Constituent of chlorophyll. 
Biology: A Functional Approach, MBV Roberts


The Magus takes centre stage,
and in his own limelight,
creates alchemy
with simple wandering players:

                             sunlight
6CO2 + 6H2O –––––––→ C6H12O6 + 6O2
Photons cascade through stacks
of green lamellae coins, exchange
one currency for another.

Sugar strings will become
coiled sugar rings,
a chorus line of can-can dancers,
energy locked in their sweet skirts.

Released, that sun-sparked flash
means a flower will bloom
a grub will feed.

Green blood throbs.
Silent Magus sits.

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