Inside Every Dream, a Raging Sea by Liz Worth

Our lives are full of personal legend. Trivial details can feel fated, weighted with meaning. What happens when we start to see the words we speak as spells? Where do the lines of ritual, magic, and daily life blur? Inspired by Worth’s professional tarot reading, these poems explore the thin veil between them and suggest it barely exists at all.

Confessional stories blend with the abstract and the occult, probing uncomfortable truths about age, regret, and shifting identity that emerge with the passing of time. Worth deftly shares the loss that comes from inadvertently discarding parts of ourselves—including our self-perception—or realizing our lives are different than we previously envisioned. We can see the world as a series of places haunted with our own memories.

Inside Every Dream, a Raging Sea elevates the everyday, celebrating memory as individual folklore. These poems offer a way into the interconnected elements of our lives and the world around us, embodying the state of possibility and openness we are all searching for.

Praise for Inside Every Dream, a Raging Sea

“‘My first prophecy was a poem,’ writes Liz Worth, conjuring the self in a state where the past portends an uncertain future. At this crossroads, personal experience informs universal truth, and Inside Every Dream, a Raging Sea unfolds like a spell cast to blur the line between legerdemain and the slow burn of daily life. A haunting, illusory read.” —Jim Johnstone, author of The King of Terrors