Mercurius Magazine was founded in May 2020 with the aim of building a community of writers and artists around the themes of “transformation” and “vitality”. The site publishes a wide range of work, from avant-garde visual poetry to contemporary surrealism and absurdism, literary essays, journalism, short stories and flash fiction. Printed anthologies are also published through “Mercurius Press”.

Who is Mercurius?

The word Mercurius comes from the alchemical concept of a “world-creating spirit” found in the writings of Carl Jung. It is the animating principle that dwells inside all things, a deity of vitality and transformation; the breath that causes worlds to change, the heart-beat enabling song; the integration of light and dark, death and life, into vision; the beginning and the end of the alchemist’s quest; the base metal and the gold; the emptiness and the fullness of time.

Why?

In this world of endless information, perspective is easily lost. One person doesn’t have all the answers, only vivid clues. Mercurius aspires to be relevant in an age of fragmentation, over-production, perpetual crisis, atomisation and hyper-specialisation; to make literature and the arts open-minded, non-elitist, interdisciplinary, well-crafted, and diverse.

Perhaps there's no rule as to where the deity of transformation resides. It could be a more traditional-looking literary essay with an urgent perspective to impart or a radical visual poem that queries some of the more stagnant norms of literary culture.

We seek to take down the barriers between high art, literary culture and current affairs, not by forcing them together in unholy matrimony, but by providing a shared space.

There’s plenty of room for unusual but resonant voices that aren’t being heard in mainstream outlets. A strange time, we live in, when the avant-garde is often more resonant than the mainstream, and the mainstream can feel abstract.

The magazine welcomes contributors from across the globe.

What?

Perhaps Mercurius is less a magazine than an ever-evolving social experiment, a community building project. All editors craft their own unique space within the Mercurius zone. We try to be as decentralised as possible.

Mercurius is a volunteer-run non-profit magazine that does not own any intellectual property.

The site has eight sections:

Poetry of Life: Literary and philosophical essays, poetry, prose-poetry
Surreal-Absurd: Experiments in surrealism and absurdism
Fiction: Short stories and novel excerpts
Reviews: New section shortly to be opened by Richard Capener
Society: Reflections on the world, resonant and unusual voices
Future World(s): Essays and interviews that explore the problems with the current civilization, attempt to map out a better world
Transitions: Essays and poems on spiritual matters
Images: Asemic writing, visual poetry, paintings, digital art, photography
Music: Essays on music and original compositions

Once a month we send out a free publication via email sign up here:

If you would like to become either a contributor or an editor, please visit the submit page.

PROJECT JUPITER: ANTHOLOGISING INDIE PRESSES

So long as what is said is valuable and relevant, we usually don't mind whether it's already been published elsewhere (so long as it hasn’t been published online). Mercurius aspires to build partnerships and alliances with like-minded presses and organisations.

Future World(s)

Drawing from the work of Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Žižek, Mark Fisher once said it is easier to foresee the end of the world than the end of capitalism. He defined capitalist realism as the inability to imagine new futures or even alternative political or economic models. 

Mercurius Magazine counters the fatalism of such assumptions by actively imagining what the structures of a future world could look like. We are only as great as the models we seek to emulate.

EDITORS

Nidia Hernández, Poetry of Life Editor

Nidia has travelled the world recording the voices of poets. Her Maja Desnuda is a shrine for poetry. She introduces Mercurius to contemporary poetry from North and South America. Read an interview with her here.

Thomas Helm, General Editor (Poetry of Life, Society, Images, Music, and Transitions)

Thomas is a writer and journalist whose poetry collections The Mountain Where Nothing Happens (Alien Buddha Press) and A Pilgrimage of Donkeys (Beir Bua Press) engage with surrealism, minimalism, absurdism, alchemy and Buddhism. He founded Mercurius in 2020. Click here for more details.

Mariana Lemos, Emergent Art / Future World(s) Editor

Mariana is a contemporary art curator focused on Feminist and Performance Art in times of climate crisis, drawing from Posthumanism, Queer, Feminist and Affect theories. She is an organising member of SALOON London, the FDRG feminist reading group. and Plants Speak If We Listen. She helps edit Mercurius’s future world (re)building space. Click here for more details.

Marcus Silcock, Surreal-Absurd Editor

Neurodivergent and nomadic, Marcus Silcock (FKA Slease) was born in Portadown, N. Ireland. His latest books include: Never Mind the Beasts (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), The Green Monk (Boiler House Press), Play Yr Kardz Right (Dostoyevsky Wannabe), Mu (Dream) So (Window (Poor Claudia), and Rides (Blart Books), among others. His poetry has been translated into Slovak, Turkish, Polish and Danish and has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including: Toad Suck Review, New World Writing, The Lincoln Review, Tin House, POETRY, Bath Magg, Tupelo Quarterly, and in the Best British Poetry series.  He comes from a working class background and currently teaches secondary school in Barcelona. He introduces Mercurius to contemporary poetry with surrealist and absurdist elements. Visit his website here: Never Mind the Beasts.

Vik Shirley, Surreal-Absurd Editor

Vik Shirley's chapbook Corpses (Sublunary Editions) was published in 2020. Her collection The Continued Closure of the Blue Door (HVTN Press), her book of photo-poetry Disrupted Blue and other poems on Polaroid (Hesterglock Press), and her pamphlet Grotesquerie for the Apocalypse (Beir Bua Press) were published in 2021. Her work has appeared in such places as Poetry London, The Rialto, Magma, 3am Magazine, Shearsman and Tentacular. She is currently studying for a PhD in Dark Humour and the Surreal at the University of Birmingham and is Associate Editor of Sublunary Edition. She edits Surreal-Absurd. Visit her website here.

Andrea Mason, Fiction Editor

Andrea Mason is fascinated with work that considers the body, objects, art and spatiality; work that uses language as an artform, and considers the page as a space and hybrid texts which take risks with form and content. She curates Mercurius’s fiction section. Visit her website here. Twitter @Andrea__Mason Instagram @andreaemason

Richard Capener, Reviews Editor

Richard Capener's releases are KL7 (The Red Ceilings, 2022), Dance! The Statue Has Fallen! Now His Head is Beneath Our Feet! (Broken Sleep Books, 2021) and The Voice Without (Beir Bua Press, December 2022) alongside writing in UK, American and Canadian publications. He edits Hem Press.