Shining Mead

Poetically speaking, it is not unusual for poets to pour new mead in old bottles, or old mead in new for that matter. What is different with Westcoat's Shining Mead is that in this book he seamlessly blends the new with the old: the ancient Viking with the modern man, the physicality of various aspects of life with the spiritual splendor of the Mysteries, the ordinary with the conspiratorially mythic. He presents the reader with a shining brew of a book that is at once exhilarating and tremendously personal. Out of this extraordinary cauldron of poetics, Westcoat's voice emerges as "a brand-new bird, born of old roots." I've never come across poems that so strongly illustrate and embrace the myriad of experiences that define a skaldic seeker working in our time. This is not a book any serious reader of poetry or Northern spiritualism will ever forget.

-Juleigh Howard-Hobson, author of the Elgin Award nominated Our Otherworld

Shining Mead "wanted to be an 'ordinary' poetry book" . . . "in proper alliterative meters without apology or pretentiousness," yet while within reach of any reader, it remains extraordinary-teaching, inspiring, and touching with quiet wisdom-as only the Skaldic Eagle can deliver. Seeker, lover, human . . . his words pour in like celestial silk, a green-glowing aurora borealis of feeling, cascading through the soul and tasting faintly of sweet cigars.

-Christina Finlayson Taylor, publisher at The Red Salon, author of Traditional Housewifery

A brilliant collection on a wide array of subjects by one of my favorite contemporary poets. Intelligent, articulate, and meticulously crafted.

-Robert N. Taylor, author of Remnants of a Season