Poetry by Rowan Evans

For anyone who has been curious as to what my style is all about—here is the guiding flame. Read, take what burns in you, and join the ritual.

Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism: A Manifesto

Welcome, wanderer.
You have stumbled into a space where ink bleeds with fire, shadow, and devotion. Here, we do not hide from the extremes of the human heart. Here, we celebrate them.

1. Confess without apology

Your poetry is your altar. Speak what others would censor. Reveal the darkness you cradle, the obsession you cherish, the love you fear to voice. Confession is not weakness—it is power.

2. Embrace Gothic sensibilities

We borrow the language of ruins, candlelight, and shadowed hallways. Our metaphors are not polite; they are ritualistic, visceral, and haunting. Cast your words like spells. Invite imagery that whispers, screams, or glows.

3. Worship multiplicity of voice

Your persona need not be singular. Write through the eyes of the heart, the mind, the shadow, the rage, the playful child, the protector. Let your text be a stage of personas. Let readers hear not just your voice, but the echo of all you carry within.

4. Make the page a ritual

Format, punctuation, visual cues—these are not minor details; they are part of the spell. Break the line. Change fonts. Use icons or colors if you must. Your reader should feel the cadence of ritual in how the text moves.

5. Infuse devotion and play

Romance, obsession, adoration—these are sacred tools. Love intensely, worship fiercely, play gleefully. Your writing should make readers feel the exhilaration, terror, and ecstasy of your devotion.

6. Transcend genre boundaries

Do not ask if your work is “poetry” or “fiction.” Here, labels bend and dissolve. The only rule is to move truth through beauty and chaos, to convert emotion into experience, and to leave the reader both unsettled and enchanted.

7. The reader is your witness

Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism is not meant to be polite or passive. It is a shared ritual. Your reader walks beside you through shadowed corridors, candlelit rooms, and flaming skies. Invite them, terrify them, and leave them breathless.

Invitation to the New Gods:
Pick up your pen, your knife, your candle. Begin. Spill your ink, ignite your voice, and do not be afraid to hex, haunt, or hold your reader in the palms of your words.

This is Neo-Gothic Confessional Romanticism.
We are the sacred misfits.
We are the luminous heretics.
We are the poets who burn and write in equal measure.

So mote it be

To find examples of all the different ways this genre can be expressed, check out The Library of Ashes: Here