48 pieces of short prose and poetry from the Norwegian poet Filidh Lochlannach is now available in e-book format. “The Dragon Leaves” is a collection of stand alone texts that tell an entire story if read together. Unpack the flashes of beautiful nature and wonderings of what happened when Christianity suppressed Paganism, all wrapped up in a poet’s paper.
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Go for a walk in the woods, find the old pathway up the hills, and follow it up to the old hill forts. By the steep trail, you see the ground all covered with Dragon Leaves. Pause for a while, watch them, kneel and turn them. Read the stories of the people that once lived there, of their world view and their relationships to Nature. Read the poems of how they revered Women and Female properties in the world around them, and learn a lesson of why humans today create their own sorrows.
This hill of poems and stories features a panoramic view into the past, including history, ecology, philosophy and religion. Throughout, these tales of an ancient culture reveals conflicts, greed, despair, but also a hope of love, harmony and peace as the Dragon is about to return.
Targeted Age Group:: 30 +
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
Hiking is one of my main interests besides writing books. I like to walk to places with a purpose of finding out about their own unique histories. I’ve found old buildings, farms, hill-forts, old trails in the mountains and much more on my journeys, and some questions always pop up in my head. “What imprints were made on this land that shaped it into what it is today?” and “Who did it?” and “Why?” During my studies of nature philosophy I learnt how to get answers to these questions and I became very fascinated by the “Spirit of the Land” and the “Songs in the Wind”. I had thought about putting it all down on paper for a long time. I had kept some kind of a messy journal mixed with historical research, old myths and my own experiences from my walking. Then I joined the “National Writing Month” in 2013, a contest where the participants are supposed to produce 50.000 words in a month. I grabbed the opportunity and transformed my research into a story. I won the challenge, but there was still a lot of work to do to finish the novel. All I had was a very raw text that needed to be put a lot of effort into to become a manuscript, and I suddenly got that nudge in the right direction of going through yet another transformation – making the novel a collection of poetry and short prose. I happened to love to write in such a free manner. I chose a writing style that had few strict rules, and my creative imagination and intuition got the chance to flow more easily when I didn’t have to think about rules and compositions. My pieces of writing became snapshots of my own experiences. They became descriptions of moments that can stand alone, although I think they are strongest when they are read together from start to end.
How Did You Come up With Your Characters?
The book is a collection of poetry and short prose and does not have many characters, but the most important ones are playing the main roles throughout the book. A woman is having great philosophical experiences together with her best friend, guided by her own personal wizard. I think I share some traits with her – the need for wandering around while wondering, and by doing so, opening up to get possible answers to questions nobody else bothers to care about. By getting those answers, the questions seem to get important after all, you just didn’t know until you got the answer. The overall concept of my texts has a student-teacher theme. My main character is the student, and all of her experiences are her teachers. I guess I can relate to that.
The wanderings and the landscapes in the book are real. I have changed some details to make each text go together with the concept of the whole story. The insights and teachings that sprang from them are presented by the teacher-archetype by the bonfire.
Book Sample
The Past meets the Present
It’s late at night. It’s cold and the stars are shining high above me. I have found myself a hilltop deep in the woods and it is far away from the settlement. There is no light pollution here. I can see into the realms of the Gods. I light up a fire so I can keep myself warm, and hang my coffee pot on a stick above the flames. The smell of the fatwood mixed with the freshly made coffee is spreading around the camp. It always has a relaxing effect on me. I sense the wellbeing all around me. It’s almost as if time stands still. It is so wonderful to slow down after a stressful day at work, and to have left all the house chores behind. The smells make me feel fresh and the sounds make me vigilant. I am so alive here. So unlike how I feel after hours on the couch at home in front of the narcotic television shows.
Great thoughts can take place when I am alone in the great void. Right here is the truth to be found. Above me the night is black, and when the Sun is gone it gives me the opportunity to look far back in time. I see all the stars, and Jupiter reigns over the night sky again. The big and shiny giant is the ruler of darkness. I think about his role to protect us from being crushed by asteroids. I think about how this powerful ball can make me feel so small, yet so safe and so taken care of, as if I were a little baby. The gas giant is like a loving father whose main mission in life is to protect his children. He holds the Universe together with his strong belt of many moons.
Time… Can we humans really comprehend what time is? Milky Way winds like a snake over the night sky. The Earth spins around herself somewhere in the body of the snake. I am a part of that snake, and I meander around its pupil in the center of the Universe. What is the snake keeping? I am never coming back to where I started. And all revolutions the Earth has done have created invisible veils of time, and that seems impossible to penetrate. Yet I know that when I look at the stars far up there – way out there it is not the present moment I see. I look far into the past many light years backwards in time.
About the Author:
I am a Norwegian woman, 40 years old.
I published my first e-book “The Dragon Leaves” in the spring 2014.
I study climate change, history and philosophy in between my writing, and ”The Dragon Leaves” is a collection of vignettes inspired by my studies.
One of the seeds for this work, “Waiting for winter,” was published in The 2013 Fall Digital Booklet of “Impluvium Studios”.
Besides writing and studies, I work as a substitute in a kindergarten.
I am currently working on my second book – a collection of short stories that I have given the working title “The Priestess of the Waterfall”
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