This collection of poems in translation is simply spellbinding. “Language/ will say inconclusive things,” claims the poet, but her language is also as malleable and generative as clay. As such the poet births new understanding through the craft of poetry, as in the poem “Their Name”:

“Out of the fabric
rises a world of newborn,
and never before objects.

Now they exist
and their name is indelible.” (p. 12)

These poems speak identity and agency into being through language. They are poems that manifest and invoke, opening space that centers rather than marginalizes, demanding attention, insisting on the indelible truth of the poet’s lived experience and observed world.

At first, fabric, clay, and ink are the recurring materials—ingredients, perhaps—that make real and tangible the poet’s conjurations amid elements of water, fire, air. Later poems invoke metal alloys, volcanic ash, stones and crystals. These poems seek to transmute iron into gold like the ancient alchemists. They carefully unfold a diagnostic language—the tool of scientific oppression and colonialism used to shackle and silence—and they transform it into shimmering imagery.

This book is 100% worth the read. The translator has taken great care to bring the poems into English with a keen attention to the layered nuances of both language and form.

My thanks to Sundial House & Columbia University Press for providing an advance copy for review. I will be writing a longer review on this book and will update once posted.

Irizelma Robles use of alchemy to symbolize her transformations as a wife, mother, woman, author, and artist created a beautiful and interesting concept within her written words.

Translated works can at times be trickier to read with the nuances of the original language missed by the reader.
Still, I was still able to gather what I believe were significant messages from Robles: the ability to call forth something from nothing, to make a sustaining elixir of life from the lemons given to us, and to advocate and fight for your self instead of succumbing to what society dictates is best.

Thanks NetGalley, Irizelma Robles, Columbia University Press, and Sundial House for the ARC.

"The Book of Conjurations" is a poetry collection, with each poem drawing from themes of alchemy, the periodic table, and transformation. A very original and interesting concept! I felt some of the poems didn't stand on their own as strongly as others, but read as a long thread of rituals and murmurations, created an intriguing pearl necklace of ideas.

Thank you NetGalley and Sundial House for the chance to read and review this book.

On the one hand, The Book of Conjurations is certainly interesting. It's not often that you can see metals used in poetry like this. However, I wonder if the translation is missing something? After a while, the poetry starts to blur together, even when certain pieces are very good.