My Books
I am happy to announce the publication of my first book, A Ride Through Faerie & Other Poems, published by Gothic Keats Press. To those who have read my Keatsian writings since 2018, it will come as no surprise that I have dedicated this particular collection to my beloved poet of poets John Keats, to honor him on the bicentennial year of his tragic death in 1821. No other poet has inspired me more. Poems such as “Lines Written by Moonlight at Whitby Abbey”, “The Fires of Ecstasy at Samhuinn”, “My Little Green Secret”, and “Edinburgh Ecstasies” have been hauntingly illustrated by Eli John.
My book is published in both hardcover and electronic formats. You can purchase the Hardcover on the publisher’s website here:
https://www.GothicKeatsPress.com/Books
A Ride Through Faerie & Other Poems is available in Paperback as well as Kindle on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Ride-Through-Faerie-Other-Poems-ebook/dp/B09KNW3ZQG
You can also find my book at Barnes & Noble and Google Books. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/a-ride-through-faerie-other-poems-clay-franklin-johnson/1141243510
What people are saying:
“Self-consciously locating himself in a poetic tradition that goes at least as far back as Shakespeare, Clay Franklin Johnson has composed a deeply affecting Liebestod to the powers of the Gothic imagination. As if by the light of a sickly taper, the individual poems in the collection chart an exhilarating flight of fancy from the morbid paraphernalia of eighteenth-century Graveyard verse and ruin poetry through to the lurid efflorescence of Decadence at the fin de siècle, with a delightful sojourn among the shadowy recesses of Romanticism along the way.”
Dale Townshend
Professor of Gothic Literature, Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies
“Clay F. Johnson’s poetry is dark, lush, and hypnotic; a labyrinthine midnight garden of nightshade and opium.”
Rebecca Buchanan
Founder of Eternal Haunted Summer, and winner of the Rhysling Award
“Inspired by Romanticism, A Ride Through Faerie & Other Poems by Clay Franklin Johnson, is a vibrant collection of narrative poetry full of vivid imagery. The poems, replete with intense emotion and lush writing, should particularly appeal to fans of the Gothic Fantasy genre.”
Karen Lee Street
Author of The Poe & Dupin Gothic Mystery trilogy
“Clay Franklin Johnson’s powerful imagery creates astonishingly visual poetry, and his depictions of hallucinations, traditional in Gothic fiction, are vivid and wonderfully original. Moreover, his fantastical poetic landscapes intertwine wistfulness and enthusiasm. A Ride Through Faerie & Other Poems combines inspiration from some of the best Romantic and Gothic authors into both biographical and illusory poetry from one of the most personal contemporary authors. Johnson’s world is unique, his personal experiences brilliantly elucidate characteristics and ideas from writers such as Keats, Mary and Percy Shelley, Coleridge, Byron, and even Stoker, especially observable in ‘Lines Written by Moonlight at Whitby Abbey’.”
Tatiana Fajardo
PhD student at Universidad del País Vasco
“Clay’s hallucinatory verses are perfectly matched with Eli John’s palimpsestic illustrations. In these pages, ghosts from the past populate sublime landscapes and sweep the reader off into a maelstrom of richly sensorial visions influenced by Gothic Romantic poetry.”
Maria J Pérez Cuervo
Writer, editor, and founder of Hellebore magazine