Math Jones

Kevin Crossley-Holland did a classic retelling, good for an intro. Rudolph Simek has a comprehensive Dictionary of Norse Myth. The Prose Edda is a major source, though it's dense prose- I'm doing a version of that myself, in alliterative verse - preserving the poetry, so Snorri might approve 🙂

Wyrd, a poem in alliterative verse by Math Jones Wyrd is simply / the way things are. / But how well do you know / the way things are? ...

"Wyrd" by @mathjones.bsky.social in the current issue of Forgotten Ground Regained.

alliteration.net/poetry/wyrd/

Forgotten Ground Regained, Issue 9, Winter, 2026 Forgotten Ground Regained: A Quarterly Journal of Alliterative Verse. Issue 9, Winter, 2026: Psalms and Meditations

Forgotten Ground Regained, A Quarterly Journal of Alliterative Verse

the new issue features psalms & meditations.

#PoetrySky

alliteration.net/back-issues/...

Song-Form, a poem in alliterative verse by Math Jones Agitation. Just arrived. / Stop. We’re staying here? / What’s ongoing? Where’s next? ...

"Song-form" by Math Jones in the current issue of Forgotten Ground Regained.

alliteration.net/poetry/song-... #alliterative #poetry #alliterativeverse #psalm #song #meditation #poetrysky #poetrycommunity #poetrylovers #writingcommunity

Why are the reconstructed rune names, *thurisaz etc, so ubiquitous & popular,

when we have Old English names so close to their modern equivalents?

'thorn', gyfu for giving, dæg for day, ger for year, ken which survives in Scots, wyn still in winsome.

The younger Norse names, the same. #HeathenSky

Those of us who are not men are not trapped by what men see.

There is a goddess, Vor, of the Old Norse. Means 'aware'.

'From her, a woman is 'aware' of 'what she knows'.'

[Ravings, or wisdom?]

#HeathenSky

There is Wyrd. The way things are. Even the gods are subject to Wyrd.

Then there is the World. What men see.

The difference between what men see & Wyrd, is often expressed as 'wierd'.

more...

Seeing the edge can put the stoppers
On a wild career; 7 sisters
Told me that.

The green lawn suddenly halts;
The encouraging slope pulls away.
Sky: fly or die!

Or else, still, stoop, step on knees
& hands, crawl, flat as pancake,
If you dare, to the end

Of the earth, & gaze...

MJ26 #PoetrySky

Would you say some words on the poetic form?

I can see the alliteration in baug & beggja, in svefn & seggja; & there's part-rhyme in baug & begg-

Are there other features that the verse has? Thanks

Everything comes from the earth, helped by the sky.

#Pagan

A line in Snorri's Prose Edda, in describing how all the things in the world wept for Baldur, to bring him back from Hel,

All peoples, all beings, all creatures, plants... even metals...

...metals, which seem to weep when brought in from the cold into a warm place.

I do that too. We do that too.

The visual is me, static in dressing gown, in an armchair, centre of my living room.

The interior is me on a medieval Fantasy quest with emotional hardship & hurt, lethal threat, defeat, despair, a roiling landscape.

The aim is not to the quell the threat, but to understand & heal it.

Recalling the climactic scenes of Civil War with great fondness...

The OE Rune Poem might be said to be describing the ingredients for 'wyn', aka joy. Blæd being something like fruitfulness, or prosperity (as you say), and blysse or bliss - so bliss is part, though not the whole of it. And the third part, byrga, suggesting safety, security & perhaps good boundaries

Freyja's blessings 🙂

There's a very gentle listening to self that is truly most affirming

Photo of a small stone marker set on a lawn of grass, an arrow pointing to the grave of J.R.R. Tolkien, Author. [The grave not shown.]

Wolvercote Cemetary

The difficulty is in expressing or describing or explaining

the truth of the gods.

Though it may be as simple as breathing, or heartbeat.

Because even with removing all talk or thought of the gods

that truth will still be truth.

Like a solstice that happens even unnoticed.

#HeathenSky

Even the trailers are tedious to me

...too young to take such a heavy oath...

...Baldur, somehow the 'flawless' thing...

So much to contemplate in this myth. & it's cropped up in a lot of my verses.

Last Christmas, I gave you my heart,
But without batteries, couldn't get it to start.
Last night, with the help of a kite,
We lit it up something special...

The gods are flawed,
They have wounds & scars.
They grow old.
The gods can be killed.
The gods are subject to the way things are.
The gods made the world from the bones of the dead.

Just like us.

& the goddesses are as great, in glory, in power & in all ways.

Also, just like us.

#HeathenSky

Perhaps it's a little like being Aesir & then realising there's also the Vanir, whose world you know almost nothing about...

[Myths are so often about consciousness...]

So 'time of people', or 'what people have done', perhaps?

Talking of a place that has people in it. Implies a place & time when we weren't? Leaves us without a term to use, since 'world' is only 'the world as we know it'.

1 more...

#HeathenSky

There's something revealing in the etymology of English language 'world' - wer-eald in Old English.

At its simplest, 'the age of man' (allowing that 'man' might mean all people, while 'wer' typically meant a fella.)

eald also has connotations of growth, or accretion even,

2 more...

YouTube video by Math Jones praise verse: Mothers' Song

#HeathenSky #Yuletide

Sharing this for Modranicht, Mothers Night,

for some the first night of Yuletide, Geōl.

My poem, Mothers Song

m.youtube.com/watch?v=QPPV...

All sorts & variety of cunnning-folk, the magic-practioners of their age, through to Victorian times. Fascinating histories 🙂

This is my #audiobook - The Knotsman - magical realism in #poetry & #prose written & read by myself.

It concerns a cunning man in C17th England, his craft being the untying of knots, with all the sympathetic magic that might imply.

Free sample in link: www.spiracleaudiobooks.com/audiobooks/t...

#PoetrySky

Nights we wake up on the ledge,
As if the edge of things
Is right here, at hand.

A gentle roll, it seems,
Will take us over
No ground, no grip.

Till the next moment lays
A hand of comfort & less clarity,
A vagueness, over what's to come.

Math Jones Dec 2025

Performed verses from the Poetic Edda, the Old English Rune Poem, & my own devotional poems to Odin, Freyja & Frigga, tonight,

alongside singer-songwriter, Kaitlyn Elverson, & soundscape artist, Antony Blakemore.

Poetry as a way of worthship.

#HeathenSky #PoetrySky