Zines I’ve read in 2023 (January)

Welcome to the first zines I read in 2023! These booklets touch upon gardening, herbs, tarot, touring, witchery, and more, and are filled with amazing art and writing! I feel as lucky and grateful as ever that they crossed my hands and eyes. Find out more about these paper treasures:

 

Alittlement – a pun on allotment – is a beautiful mini-zine about gardening by Kit. It’s written from a personal viewpoint and the typewritten text is surrounded by Kit’s lovely drawings. I love that it talks about disability and the influence that being disabled (and being a permaculture design student) has on gardening decisions. I’ve just read Kit’s other zines which I will tell more about soon!

The newest issue of Annual Pocket Thoughts edited by Ryan contains artwork by a variety of zinesters such as Amélie Paquet, Crash Reynolds, and of course Ryan himself (as well as yours truly). Reading this compilation zine is a great way to get to know some of the zine talent that’s out there. There’s a wide range of comics, collages, poems, and even artwork featuring South Park meets The Exorcist. 🙂

Awakening the Four Queens by author and YouTuber Kelly-Ann Maddox takes you on a journey to meet the 4 queens of tarot: queen of swords, queen of cups, queen of pentacles, and queen of wands. She writes about their personalities and what we can learn from them which I found a very interesting approach. I love how Kelly-Ann takes working with tarot cards always one step further.

Hadass always gets very productive zine-wise during ZineWriMo (Zine Writing Month in November) which is very motivating and cool to see. In Blah Blah Blah, one of her recent mini-zines, she sheds her thoughts and words stream-of-consciousness style in a free-form collage layout.

Gramarye is one of my new favourite zines. In my opinion it’s the ultimate witchy perzine (personal zine) as it contains reflections about the wheel of the year, spells, and rituals in a diary style. It’s really nice to read about the practice and ideas of other witches and get some inspiration and a new take on magick from someone who also cares about social justice activism.

Hat Genius is Laura-Marie’s poetry zine but I find it as personal and political as her other zines. This issue takes you along to her past experiences, dreams, and observations. It’s impressive how many zines (and blogposts!) Laura-Marie writes. This is only one zine title and it’s already issue #25! And I’m sure she still has many valuable and amazing things to say and write in the future.

Rumlad is a comic zine from the UK and this issue depicts a DIY punk tour. I’m a fan of diary comics and in particular when it’s about one of my interests such a being in a band. Not sure if this 9th issue is still available but you might still find it in a zine distro or shop. It’s a rather thin issue but it has really cool artwork.

The Sapphic Utopia Zine by Ayshe-Mira Yashin aka the Illustration Witch features her amazing drawings depicting scenes of lesbian love in utopic settings, along with information about the motivation for the zine. I love Ayshe-Mira’s sense of detail with all the body hair and elements from nature. Each image seems to feature a lot of symbology as well. I just wish there were more pages in this zine. Ayshe-Maria makes prints and tarot decks too, so be sure to check out her work.

Wild Rose and This Garden is Yours are both by Liminal Spaces. I’ve read more of their herbal zines before and learned a lot from them. These are VERY in-depth studies that include not only information about the features, benefits, and uses of the plants but also about what we can learn from them symbolically. This made me appreciate these plants even more. This Garden is Yours is not about herbs or gardening but it’s about knowing, setting, and communicating our boundaries in human relationships, a very helpful zine for anyone.

❤

Read more zines reviews on this blog. Find my own zines here.