In preparation for our forthcoming Winter Solstice episode, please enjoy:
Rendering Unconscious Podcast episode 205.
Katy Bohinc presents “Poetry as Magic” at the conference Re-writing the Future: 100 Years of Esoteric Modernism and Psychoanalysis, Merano, Italy, 2019; collected papers from this conference have been published as The Fenris Wolf 11. Katy also presented at the first Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult conference, London 2016; papers from that conference are collected in The Fenris Wolf 9.
In this episode, Katy discusses her journey from the 2016 Psychoanalysis, Art & the Occult conference to founding a company based on astrology and trigonometry, aiming to gather 2 million data points for statistical significance. She also shares her experience publishing Trinity Star Trinity, a poem about the divine feminine, with Scarlet Imprint, which led to her being labeled a witch by the occult community. Katy explores contemporary poetry’s intersection with magic, citing Robert Graves’ “The White Goddess” and various poets’ use of magical methodologies. She contrasts American and Chinese poetic traditions, emphasizing intuition over logic in Chinese poetry, and questions the distinction between magic, religion, and spirituality in poetry.
Katy Bohinc is a poet and a data scientist; an avant garde publisher and a professional marketer; an activist, an astrologer and an innovator. “I studied pure math and comparative literature. I don’t think these things are contradictory. I think it’s the future.” One example of how this all comes together is in this article.
She has three books of poetry: Dear Alain (Tender Buttons Press, 2014), Trinity Star Trinity (Scarlet Imprint, 2017), and Scorpio (Miami University Press, 2018).
Since 2013, she’s collaborated on the award-winning Tender Buttons Press with Founding Editrix Lee Ann Brown. They publish experimental women’s poetry, expanding the field of possible and probable since 1989. Nearly half of all Tender Buttons authors have been honored with Guggenheim lifetime achievement awards. Through Tender Buttons she has edited two volumes of poetry: Tender Omnibus: The First Twenty-Five Years of Tender Buttons Press and Please Add To This List: A Guide To Teaching Bernadette Mayer’s Sonnets and Experiments.
Since 2008, she’s worked as a data scientist and engineer for Fortune 500 brands, leading teams which measure marketing performance and architect analytics systems.
In 2021, she founded The Ratio, which studies astrology with data science. The Ratio continues a 2,500+ year old, universal math problem. “I believe there is indeed music in the spheres, and wish to experience it personally. We have the data and technology now to approach astrology - which birthed for humanity all of mathematics - with contemporary eyes! Aren’t you curious too?”
Rendering Unconscious is also a book series! Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics & Poetry vols 1:1 & 1:2 (Trapart Books, 2024).
The song at the end of the episode is from the Lunacy soundtrack by Vanessa Sinclair and Carl Abrahamsson, available from Highbrow Lowlife.
Thanks to Carl Abrahamsson for creating the intro and outro music for Rendering Unconscious Podcast.
