About the Poetry. The poems in this collection include ballads and acrostics, and quite a few songs with refrains. What they don't include is free verse or any of the strict syllabic forms. The style used might be called retro-Victorian metrical verse, but don't let that trouble you. These pieces were conceived from a fascination with the worlds of fantasy and a joy in the music of the English language. Despite, or perhaps because of, their subject matter, they are not intended for younger readers. About the Poet Sally Odgers has been writing verse for forty years. Several of her poems have been published in collections and anthologies from mainstream publishers in Australia and the UK, and she has produced a handful of rhyming picture books as well as a how-to book called Writing Metrical Verse. Sally is a full time writer. Excerpt I hope you have enjoyed your journey through my patterns of magic and rhyme. The pieces you have read draw on many traditions, and I have picked and chosen those which suit my purpose. In many cases, I have made up my own traditions. I need hardly add (I hope!) that none of the spells or charms in the Witchsight section is anything but a pinch of fancy. Candles, water and flowers have been used in an attempt to cast spells in the past, but I have never researched the exact ingredients. I have never seen a ghost, met a unicorn, or expected to marry a fairy. but I acknowledge the power and strength of their traditions, and thoroughly enjoyed inventing my own. My poetry, like my characters, owes something to many old traditions, and something to my own invention. Apart from the acrostics, none of the pieces is written in any strict or set poetical form. The influences, as you can probably tell, come mostly from the 19th Century, with a nod towards the earlier forms of Modern English in Tudor times.
Used availability for Sally Odgers's Fernseed For Fairysight