Ravens
Curiously a raven is known in the plural as “an unkindness” or “a conspiracy” of ravens. The inspiration for these works croaked through from a throaty Raven call I heard on my recent return to Australia from Berlin in late 2017. The Australian Raven, quaintly attributed to the local backyard wildlife, is one of the many flapping, screeching and coarse songs in small-town scenery of an Australian outback.
Not dissimilar to other cultures and mythologies surrounding the raven and its cousin the crow, the opinion of the Australian Raven is polarised. The unfair connotations to the dead, the underworld and sinister omens breed a dislike to the bird, whom is otherwise admired for its majestic and proud characteristics feathered in a sleek, shiny black. Peeling back layers into the Australian psyche and creepy endless stretch of a dirt horizon meeting an inky night sky. My work pivots on the edge where the perceived ‘normal’ threatens towards the superstitious, magical and curious.
An Australian drunken pisstake, post Edgar Allan Poe’s Poem, The Raven.
The Raven - my post Poe poem
Once upon a drunken evening,
stumbling with my friend, perceiving,
for the meaning to conceiving,
some such subject seen to draw.
To draw upon and such in keeping,
from hence Berlin did my leaving,
with a pleasing, to now be breathing,
an Australian evening, with my friend a drinking.
Only this and nothing more.
On black paper I do draw,
from early photos of crime/outlaw.
Why this awe of grim and gore?
Should I deplore?
With pointed finger and slack jaw?
Like my parents do uproar:
“You are sweet and what is more,
just a girl, and therefore,
I abhor this morbid gore.”
In all honest, I’m not hardcore.
A creaky door shakes me to my core.
But I implore, for film noir and Coco/Dior,
the colour black I do adore.
Here for evermore.
So with my friend we were drinking
and thinking whilst our livers sinking,
under the blinking and the twinkling
of the southern stars.
I do declare,
I draw with care,
in strands like hair,
graphite laid bare.
From a distance,
is resistance,
an illusion of visual nonexistence.
Yet with the insistence
of persistence,
come in closer to the light’s assistance,
reveals the drawings’ actual existence.
This it is and nothing more.
So here returned to my childhood home.
My mind doth roam,
through ideas to comb.
What to draw in monochrome?
From the backyard comes a creaking,
then a croaking, n’ amusing screeching.
“The hell is that?!” To myself, I am speaking.
It’s usually the house that’s freaking, squeaking
with creepy creaking.
But here a large black bird, through its white eyes peeping,
in my backyard does it’s greeting.
Meekly, I am blinking and unspeaking
in my peeking back at this bird leaking
a croak it’s creaking.
T’was later, with the wine insulator,
that my friend, environment coordinator,
the Australian Raven’s name was related.
So, inebriated, through the night we imitated,
an animated Australian Raven call.
Quoth the Raven… “eeeerrr, eeeaaarrrrr, eeeerrrroooooooooorrr”.
— alice