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Paul Robichaud

@pjrobichaud.bsky.social

4.7K followers 3.5K following 1.7K posts

Literature, myth, folklore • Stories of the Stones: Imagining Prehistory in Britain, Ireland, & Brittany (Reaktion, 2026) • Pan: the Great God’s Modern Return • Poems in NewPoetry.ca, The South Shore Review, and The Ekphrastic Review • Professor of English

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Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 16d

If you live in the UK, you can now pre-order 'Stories of the Stones' directly from Reaktion Books or your favourite bookseller. Publication date is 1 February, 2026!

Pre-order here: reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/stories...

Cover of 'Stories of the Stones: Imagining Prehistory in Britain, Ireland and Brittany,' depicting a seventeenth-century illustration of Stonehenge.

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Nina Antonia @ninaantonia13.bsky.social · 9h

illustration of Welsh supernatural author & mystic the great Arthur Machen (1863-1947) who was an influence on Lovecraft & whose work has never been equaled for its uncanny transcendence. The Fall's Mark E. Smith was also a fan of the man who wrote 'The Great God Pan.' (art Smoky Man)

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Maria J Pérez Cuervo @mjpcuervo.bsky.social · 11h

For Halloween season, nothing like hearing Christopher Lee talk about “witchcraft, magic, sorcery… ancient supernatural ways to explain the unknown we now call the occult…”

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGy5...

Christopher Lee's The Occult - Mysteries of the Supernatural (1977)

YouTube video by Lance

www.youtube.com

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Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 10h

Poet e.e. cummings was born #OTD in 1894: ‘the / goat-footed / balloonMan / whistles / far / and / wee’

🎨 Pan and dancers by e.e. cummings

Sketch of various figures including Pan.

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Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 10h

Always pleased to get the annual volume from @asls.org.uk — this year’s looks great!

Cover of ‘Setting the Stage: New Wave Scottish Drama from the 1970s and 1980s.’

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Modernist Studies Association (MSA) @moderniststudies.bsky.social · 1d

Believe it or not, it's already time to think about MSA 2026 in Loughborough, UK. The conference will meet July 1-4, and proposals for panels, papers, roundtables, workshops, and seminars is December 1. Please note this MUCH earlier deadline. The CFP is here: www.moderniststudies.org/conference/M...

An image of a Tarot card empress with a crown of stars on a mustard yellow background. The text says: Weird Modernism, BAMS/ MSA 26, 1-4 July 2026. Loughborough University, UK

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Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 1d

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone back home! 🇨🇦

A man and woman in uniform surround an older woman with a turkey, 1943.

Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 1d

After wading through the usual AI slop, I'm genuinely happy to read a student paper that says things like 'this is famous for being scary' because it actually sounds like a student.

Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 1d

Yes, it does, though I’m not sure it did back in the 30s when Hurston wrote; wouldn’t surprise me though.

Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 2d

Saw this last night at the Yale Rep — a brilliant production of a play that grew out of Hurston’s anthropological interests in African American folk traditions, music, and hoodoo.

Programme cover for Zora Neale Hurston’s ‘Spunk.’

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hookland.bsky.social @hookland.bsky.social · 2d

The Long Neolithic lives as a sense of wonder. It sits in distant fields and summons us to not only witness its stone persistence, but to engage with its slow release of mystery. Its power bends not only the landscape, but our sense of story. – Dr. K. Brophy #StandingStoneSunday

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Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 2d

Notorious English magician Aleister Crowley was born #OTD in 1875. In his ‘Hymn to Pan,’ he urges the god to ‘Do as thou wilt, as a great god can / O Pan! Io Pan!’

Crowley making the Sign of Pan beside a book with a pentagram on thr cover.

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Sardonicus @sardonicus.eu · 2d

James Macintosh Patrick’s poster advertising rail travel to Dunnottar Castle, Scotland, 1938

Travel Poster
a castle atop a rocky coastline

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Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 2d

Standing stones from the Menec alignments at Carnac, Brittany, beside an abandoned house. #StandingStoneSunday

📷 June, 2023

Rows of standing stones beside an abandoned house.

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Dr Pat Witts @wittspat.bsky.social · 2d

For #StandingStoneSunday, remembering a wonderfully atmospheric visit to the incomparable Castlerigg stone circle recently. The wisps of cloud in the valley added to the mystique.

Part of a stone circle curving from right foreground to left centre. The stones are mostly upright with a few lying down. They are in a grassy setting with mountains and clouds in the distance. Some of the clouds are dipping into a valley just above left of centre.

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Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 3d

Sad to read of the death of William Blissett, with whom I shared many a cup of coffee in the Robarts Library cafeteria at Toronto. He was a kind and generous mentor.

The literary life and times of English Professor William Blissett

www.artsci.utoronto.ca

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Hellebore @helleborezine.bsky.social · 3d

British folk horror and occult characters to be on Halloween, a thread.

1. Mr Fisher from Robin Redbreast (1970).
Catchphrase: “The study of religions is one of my many interests.”
You’ll need:
- Tweed trilby
- Mutton chops
- Cracked spectacles
- A copy of The Golden Bough

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Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 4d

My maternal great-grandfather emigrated to Canada a year after this photo was taken to work for Sir Henry Pellatt as gardner, which he did until Sir Henry ran out of money and had to give up the property in 1923.

James Fraser (University of Guelph) @jamesefraser.bsky.social · 4d

A fun photograph of Casa Loma (or "Casa Lorna"!) under construction, from a 1912 Star Weekly.

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Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 4d

It feels like we're witnessing the collapse of the arts and humanities in higher education, as global fascism twists it into vocational training for its own ideological purposes.

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Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 4d

I have never seen the academic job market as bad as this year. This is peak listing time for the MLA and there are currently just 148 listed faculty positions in English in the USA, and just 4 in Canada.

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Fortean Times @forteantimes.bsky.social · 4d

On sale now!
Witches and Witchcraft: Stories of Sorcery, Spells and Superstition
A new special edition from the archives of Fortean Times, with an introduction and commentary by historian of witchcraft Malcolm Gaskill.
In shops now, or order direct from:
shop.forteantimes.com/product/witc...

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Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 4d

I feel seen.

Box of records with a sign reading 'Used Folk.'

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Simon Spanton @simonguy.bsky.social · 4d

"It was there that I saw him first and for the only time in my life, at a noon hour crazy with heat. It was at a moment when time, demented and wild, breaks away from the treadmill of events and like an escaping vagabond, runs shouting across the fields. Then the summer grows out of control."

Pan

A photo of the 1988 Picador edition of The Fictions of Bruno Schulz. The cover art is by Andrej Krauze.

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Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 4d

Thanks for this -- new to me!

Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 5d

Surrealist painter, writer, and occultist Ithell Colquhoun was born #OTD in 1906. She was fascinated by megalithic sites, which she explored in painting and in her travel books 'The Crying of the Wind: Ireland' (1955) and 'The Living Stones: Cornwall' (1957).

🎨'La Cathedrale Engloutie' (1952)

Surrealist landscape showing figure-of-eight pattern of stones, half submerged and half on an island.

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Paul Robichaud @pjrobichaud.bsky.social · 5d

'Stories of the Stones' in the new Reaktion Books catalogue!

Catalogue page for 'Stories of the Stones: Imagining Prehistory in Britain, Ireland, and Brittany,' with a publication date of 1 February 2026.

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