<p class="ql-align-center"><strong><em>"Harnessing winter's energy, I drift,</em></strong></p><p class="ql-align-center"><strong><em>my free, wild woman's soul,</em></strong></p><p class="ql-align-center"><strong><em>alight with day's deep desires."</em></strong></p><p class="ql-align-center"><br></p><p><br></p><p><strong>An evocative, soul-stirring poetry collection for adults, by&nbsp;history-making theatre practitioner and Amazon best‑selling author of <em>Bare Spirit,</em> Susan Marshall.</strong></p><p><br></p><p>In winter in Melbourne, 2024, award-winning Susan Marshall set herself a challenge. Outdoors, she attuned herself to the raw, living energies of the season and fostered the artistic emergence and growth of the wild soul in poetry.</p><p><br></p><p>What resulted is Susan's magnificent collection of 31 poems: <em>Wild Soul: Contemporary Classical Winter Poetry,</em> which is a tribute to her refined, globally renown, metaphysical artistry. She unleashes the soul's wild states of existence amidst: the dark, fire, fog, grey, light, rain, ice, snow, starkness, storm, stillness and silence of winter.</p><p><br></p><p>Susan fuses contemporary metaphysical poetry with the conventions of classical literary styles, including: Romanticism (<em>Wild Woman Soul, Winter Solstice's Secret, Beats of Wander, Wild Love, Stoic Solitude, Harboured Love</em> and <em>Kiss Me with Clear Sight</em>); Dark Romanticism (<em>Silent Flight, Cold Frost, Quieten My Heart, Your Voice Hides, Free Soul, Hold onto My Fire Heart </em>and <em>A Shelter for the Soul</em> ); Gothic (<em>Dark Storm Melody, Stirring her Storm, Love's Wild Silhouette, Tiny, Soulful Dancer, Wild Alive</em> and <em>Spirit of the Light</em>) and Steam Punk (<em>Lost Flame of Love)</em>. Susan allures us into the wild presence, awakenings, emotions, journeys, manifestations, states and transformations of the soul with evocative, soul stirring personas, visual imagery and journeyed verses.</p><p><br></p><p>Also included in this collection, are metaphysical, winter poems that Susan has written to pay tribute to the city of Florence, its people and its Renaissance history. In <em>O Sweet Florence, Unearth My Soul,</em> she acknowledges Florence's role in helping to awaken her own wild soul and its artistry. Her poem: <em>Wild Artist's Soul</em> acknowledges the significant, historical emergence and growth of the Renaissance artist. Susan celebrates the soul's healing and renewal at the end of winter, in her poem: <em>Rise of the Daffodil</em>. She has also written eight winter Sonnets (using Pertrarchan conventions), which detail her stunning, metaphysical inspirations in both Florence and Australia.</p>