"The Magician’s Girl: An Interview with Julia Gordon-Bramer, Plath Scholar and Mystic"

Abstract

Julia Gordon-Bramer is a Sylvia Plath scholar with a special interest in occult practices, especially the Tarot of which she is a regular practitioner. I first met Julia as I was onboarding to become the next poetry editor for Plath Profiles. In the process of bringing our new staff members together to train with former editors and contributors, I got to know Julia and become familiar with her work. I wanted to go deeper in order to understand the workings of the occult in Plath’s poetry and Julia’s personal interest in the occult, as her interest in occult poetry resonates deeply with my own current research questions on poetry and magic. What does it mean for poetry to be “magical”? What might a magical poetics look like? Julia, when asked these and other questions, was more than game to talk Plath, poetics, magic, ouija, Tarot, Kabbalah, and many other fascinating topics. What follows is an excerpt from the transcription of my oral history interview with Julia, which will soon be permanently housed in Naropa University’s Archives and Special Collections.