The Magician's Tales

Who is the Magician? In the fluid zone between the dreamworld and now, between what had been anticipated and what occurred, often rolling under waves of images from the darker side of consciousness, caught in the riptide of death and loss, she enters into dialogue with those she loves.... What is her magic? She has many voices; she isn't human; her forms are multiple and in constant evolution. Other cosmologies inform the present; climate change is only one disturbing factor that alters the course of lives. The existence of stones, snow, and trees becomes the memory that haunts when someone dies, when someone dissolves into unknown spaces.... The Magician is a time-machine, a presence beyond the immediate.

... Moorhead tells her readers that "There is no science to imaginary acts." Dream sequences blur the lines seamlessly between mystic places of the heart and the natural world.... Magical perceptions evoke a climactic essence as felt in the description of a shroud, "Woven from thistle down and snakeskins, dandelion fleece and milkweed. It lets in light, keeps out the rain; it's buoyant and soft as skin." -Silvia Scheibli, author of In the House of Rain

... With her in your steady footsteps, in your more than passing glances, in your dreams without memories, in your hands where you touch either "the slow aching of stone miles under the glistening crust," "the razor-thin marks of eternal fire," or a simple "white rain," there's no destination but where you are now. -Paul B. Roth

... There is word magic here, word music used to capture and evoke, in opposition to a need to "accept what can only continue to slip away." Moorhead writes that "one never knows what will pass by, what will emerge or recede", yet she is consistently able to document and share each surprise encounter, frozen moment, new realization or sudden conviction, her mesmeric poems always "moving into the clear quiet space just below the heart." -Rupert Loydell, editor of Stride