iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The cultists gather for the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival. (Myself, D. L. Myers and Sarah Walker.)

Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I'll be reading my latest alliterative poems at the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival and CthulhuCon in Portland! My reading will be at the Hollywood Library, Saturday, 5 p.m. I'll be sharing a block with the redoubtable Garrett Cook. Come one! Come all! hplfilmfestival.com/hplfilmfesti...

hplfilmfestival.com

Author Reading: Garret Cook, Adam Bolivar

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I made use of the lunar fullness to finish an alliterative poem I’m been wrestling with for a while: ‘Meadmad’, about the Mead of Poetry. (Illo by Katharine Pyle, 1930.)

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Portlanders! On the sacred night of Halloween, a never-before seen spectacle will take place: a PUPPET EDDA, the world’s first alliterative-verse marionette show, preceded by spooky poetry readings from legendary author John Shirley and myself. At the Rose City Book Pub, Portland on Oct. 31st, 8 pm.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

I made a wee video of myself reciting my alliterative poem "Hymn to Hel" whilst plucking an Anglo-Saxon lyre like a scop. Turn on the captions to read along. youtu.be/GLhrNp46HKo

youtu.be

Helelof (Alliterative verse on Anglo-Saxon lyre)

YouTube video by Adam Bolivar

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Spotted in the wild in the horror section of Powell's Books: THE ETTINFELL OF BEACON HILL. Rumour has it two sequels will be published in the near future...

The Ettinfell of Beacon Hill on the shelf at Powell's Books

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

I'm pleased to have a poem, "The Twilit Land," in the Liminal Spaces issue of Weird Fiction Quarterly alongside such a cavalcade of amazing writers. weirdfictionquarterly.com/coming-soon-...

weirdfictionquarterly.com

Coming Soon: Liminal Spaces & Beings

We found the "Liminal Spaces & Beings" manuscript and are publishing it before it disappears between dimensions again!

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

A rare photograph has emerged of me at the age of 16, cosplaying (although that word did not exist yet) as the Second Doctor.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

My great-grandmother Daisy Drake Pleasants and my great-uncle Harry, 1909.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

The marionettes dressed up for their performance in my alliterative-verse puppet edda this Halloween: Edgeong (a.k.a. Idunn) with her apples of youth, Luca (Loki) wearing the falcon-feathered cloak, Scratta the ettin, Woden, and a rapidly aging Hama (Heimdallr).

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Just completed a new alliterative poem called 'Ashspittle' based on the Norwegian folktale of Askeladden, the Ash Lad--a very similar figure to Jack. Scholar Eldar Heide argues that the Ash Lad was a vätte, a domestic spirit of the hearth, whose origins intersect with Loki's. (Illo by T. Kittelsen)

Askeladdan and the troll. Illo by Theodor Kittelsen.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Some of the players in my alliterative-verse marionette show, THE LAY OF SCRATTA, premiering this Halloween: Woden, Luca and Edgeong (Anglo-Saxon versions of the gods better known by their Old Norse names Oðinn, Loki and Iðunn).

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Very saddened to learn of the death of Fred Phillips at the age of 87. He was a top-tier formal poet. Here we are on poetry panel together at NecronomiCon 2015. (Fred is on the far right in the green shirt.)

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I was very impressed by this animation of BEOWULF. The story is straightforwardly told, with a strong sense of alliteration--by Derek Jacobi, no less! www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKjc...

youtube.com

Animated Epics: BEOWULF (1998) TV Movie [360p] HQ - Classic animation

YouTube video by Lupo Canis

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

More evidence of last night's secret marionette phantasmagoria. (Photos courtesy of Ryan Whitley.)

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Summoning spirits in St. John's Churchyard, Providence.

Adam, his hands on a Ouija board planchette

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

In St. John's Churchyard, Providence, late at night, summoning the dead.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I'll be in Providence for NecronomiCon Providence on Thursday! My panels and poetry reading are all on Saturday. AND! I will be performing my customary hotel-room marionette show on Saturday at 8 p.m. at the Graduate. (Room TBD.) I hope to see you there... necronomicon-providence.com/welcome/

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

I'll be at NecronomiCon Providence this August! Come see me on the Fungi from Yuggoth and William S. Burroughs panels (my veins are throbbing at the prospect). AND! I'll be performing my now-traditional hotel-room marionette show... I hope to see many of you there!

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

Three hares. 16th-century German manuscript, artist unknown.

Three hares running in a circle, ears entwined.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 24/05/2026

TOLD BY FIRELIGHT IN TIMBERED HALLS is #28 in Medieval Literature--one above the NECRONOMICON! If you want to read real stories of old gods in faithfully rendered traditional alliterative verse, look no further. www.amazon.com/Told-Firelig...

TOLD BY FIRELIGHT IN TIMBERED HALLS ranking

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 23/05/2026

My obligatory World Goth Day picture.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Today would have been the 128th birthday of my grandfather, J. L. Pitts. Here is in about 1920 and performing a magic trick for me in 1973.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

I'm pleased to have completed a short story, something I haven’t done in a while, having been fixated entirely on poetry. The story is called ‘The Red Ettin’, though it not much like the fairy tale. Well, maybe a little… (Illo by Henry Justice Ford, 1889)

Illustration from THE BLUE FAIRY BOOK by Andrew Lang.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Wahey! My alliterative-verse collection, TOLD BY FIRELIGHT IN TIMBERED HALLS was nominated for an Elgin Award! That's a lovely thing to wake up to.

TOLD BY FIRELIGHT IN TIMBERED HALLS book cover

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

I say, what a delightful afternoon it's been!

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

Thirteen years today since my mother's death. I still miss her dreadfully.

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Reposted by Adam Bolivar

𝖆𝖇𝖘𝖎𝖙 ♱ 𝖔𝖒𝖊𝖓 @murkbone.bsky.social · 14/11/2024

In came four rabbits as black as ink, carrying a small coffin on their shoulders.

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Reposted by Adam Bolivar

bex @blueraccoon.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

space terrifies me but I'm very, very glad some people love it and aren't phobic of the endless black

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 04/04/2026

I did it! I wrote a four-act marionette show in traditional alliterative verse, based on a Norse myth—a puppet edda if you will: THE LAY OF SCRATTA. (Illo by John Bauer, 1911)

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

The ancient Greeks and Roman performed marionette shows. The word for marionette was neurospaston, from neuros (string) and spao (to pull). Marionettists were called neurospastai (string-pullers) or thaumatopoioi (marvel-makers).

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Live picture from Artemis II. The Earth looks small and everything on it unimportant. Everyone is fighting over a tiny dot in space.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

The Rampant Hare bestows his blessings on the Pink Moon and first day of Eosturmonath!

Rampant Hare marionette bestowing blessings.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

I have an idea for an alliterative-verse marionette play, an Anglo-Saxon retelling (pre-telling?) of a Norse myth. Surely I shall be the first to attempt such a thing--the first and only puppet scop!

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

As an equinox offering, I sent the great pagan historian Ronald Hutton (with whom I correspond) a new alliterative poem, 'Éastranblót'. He replied: 'Lovely, Adam. I think I shall recite it to friends this weekend.' No greater praise!

Éastranblót

by Adam Bolivar

Pink the moon is · over ploughed furrows,
Winterweary · and wakened the earth;
We dress lightly · as days lengthen,
In meadows meeting · when the moon is full,
To feast on cakes · and fill our horns.
Éastre dances, · eager her swaying,
Greengowned and fair, · and goldenhaired;
A lover she seeks · to lie in grass,
Harvestplanting. · Hares are leaping,
A cuckoo cries · the coming of dawn,
Pinkpainted sky · appears in the east;
Sing now, cuckoo, · for summer comes in!

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Freyja's feline flight of fancy. (Emil Doepler, 1905)

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 08/03/2026

Today’s cemetery quest: the grave of Hendrik van Gogh, the first cousin of the famous Vincent van Gogh (Hendrik’s father and Vincent’s father were brothers). He was buried in Lone Fir Cemetery, Portland, Oregon, after drowning in Guild Pond. Dis manibus.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

I am revising my very first alliterative-verse poem, ‘The Lay of Géac Ettinfell’, a 134-line Old English-style retelling of ‘Jack the Giant-Killer’. When I wrote this poem, my knowledge of the metrics of AV was rudimentary, but since the story is dear to my heart, I wanted to versify it properly.

Jack arrived at the Castle of the Giant with Three Heads.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Laid up all day with a horribly painful migraine, the third in the last couple of weeks. I used to have a medication that worked quite well, but my health insurance replaced it with something else (probably because it's cheaper) which is completely ineffective. ☹️

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

The BLASPHEMERS PUNISHED; or, The NEW JERSEY DANCE of DEVILS. A horrid relation of FACTS which took place a few weeks ago in New Jerſey. (Boston, 1797)

The Devil fiddles for blasphemers in New Jersey.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

Hey, a nice review of THE ETTINFELL OF BEACON HILL: zachgeorge1993.substack.com/.../the-etti.... There are whispers in the darkness of a sequel book--perhaps two...

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

I'm pleased to note that my poem "The Twilit Land" has been accepted for the next issue of WEIRD FICTION QUARTERLY! (Engraving of unknown attribution.)

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

Ah, there are few things more delightful than fresh detachable shirt collars!

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

It is done! I have completed all thirteen of my ÉSALOFAS: Heathen Hymns to the Old Gods. I have written prayers to Wóden, Thunor, Lúca, Frówe, Ing, Hel, Háma, Gnorna, Tíw, Edgeong, Sigewynn, Éastre and Bældæg, all composed in accordance with the strictures of alliterative verse.

Odin's last words to Baldr, J. G. Collingwood, 1908

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 27/12/2025

I have completed the eleventh of my alliterative-verse ’Heathen Hymns’—this one to Sigewynn (Sigyn). Almost done! My intention is to write thirteen: six to gods, six to goddesses and one to Lúca (Loki), who can be either.

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

My tenth alliterative ‘Heathen Hymn’ is a prayer to the goddess who keeps the golden apples of eternal youth, called Iðunn in Old Norse. My speculative Old English cognate is Edgeong (pronounced ‘Ed-young’), which means ‘again young’ or ‘rejuvenated’. I’d like a taste of your apples please!

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Adam Bolivar @adambolivar.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

I've finished composing an alliterative-verse prayer to Tíw (or Týr, if you prefer), the ninth of my 'Heathen Hymns'. I use the Saxon names of the gods (Wóden, Thunor, Tíw, etc.), but I'm writing the poems in such a way that the Norse names can be substituted without breaking the alliteration.

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