I am running a magic
realism bloghop again this year. Some twenty blogs are signed up to
take part and if last year’s bloghop is anything to go by, there
will be some fascinating posts.
Over
on the Magic
Realism Books blog I
have scheduled posts about magic realist fiction available free from
the web, about useful magic realism resources and a review of
Bulgakov’s Master
and Margarita,
which features on all the magic realism lists as one of the most
important magic realist books ever written and is one of my all-time
favourite books. Despite having written three posts for my other
blog I want to write a more personal post here on my personal
blog about what magic realism means to me.
Of course there is good
and bad magic realism, magic realist books that last for ever in your
mind and others that are easily forgotten. But as a general rule I
find that the magic realist approach to portraying the world is one
that I respond to and I recognize that it reflects my own experience.
That is not to say that I have seen people ascend to heaven, been
followed by crowds of butterflies when I fell in love or watched a
relative turn into an item of furniture. But rather that I believe in
allegory and metaphor, in imagery, in archetypes and in a heightened
awareness that extends beyond “physical” reality.
For me, realism is
overestimated. It excludes the profound. It does not allow my soul to
soar. Nor does it take me to the depths beyond pain. I am and have
always been a poet and a bit of a mystic. For a while, as a student,
I neglected that side of my personality in favour of the rational and
the academic. I stopped writing. It didn’t last. The
subconscious has a way of hitting back and my health suffered. Unable
to think straight because of the pain, my reason dropped away and I
was left with only instinct and intuition to fall back on – magic
one might say. The poetry came flooding back. The result was my cycle of somewhat mystical poetry Poem for Voices.
