The Scrying Glass

"SCRYING" is a term used used for seeing into the beyond, divination, crystal balls, stones, the murmurations of birds, the magic mirror of the wicked queen in "SNOW WHITE", all used in antiquity. This book of dark poems can be used as a means of divination, a "scrying glass", if you will much like the black obsidian mirror-like items found among the belongings of countesses and queens centuries ago. By opening this book to any given page and putting one's finger on a poem one's unanswered questions may be interpreted. A mystery, a way of the the unknown being suggested ; a path may be found. On their own these poems span from 1982 through to 2019 and include the chapbooks published in the 1990's such as SLIPPED OUT UNDER THE DOOR, COLD EYE BLIND WINDOW, and the poems from the chapbook of short stories called NEKROSURREALIA, the stories of which have now been republished in the paperback AMDUAT, published by Amazon in 2019 with many thanks going to writer Duncan MacLeod for orchestrating the publication. Omewenne's poems are sometimes related to each other as sisterly, some are naïve or simple verse, or inspired by the metaphysical or inspired by confessional poems, but get at the heart of the subject. Nearly all make use of metaphors and surrealism whether rhyming or free verse. Omewenne was first published in her early teens in anthologies but only ever read her poetry aloud in the poetry scene of 1990's San Francisco and the scene in Portland, Oregon around 2010 where she lived for a short time after a serious breakdown. Most of her best poetry comes from out of mental illness and it is through the lens of schizophrenia that her work grows. Hers is a life of sexual abuse, mental illness, and exploitation but also of critical acclaim, the supernatural, films, stage works, and art and music. A SCRYING GLASS is an opening into her life and into her audience's like a psychic reading, a summoning of the spirit world, a presaging, or a knowingness of the present.