Tapping At Our Chamber Door – Begin A Raven Project
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “‘Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door— Only this, and nothing more.”
Edgar Allen Poe
Raven has come tapping at the chamber door, urging everyone to include her in some writing or art.
When I work with young children I always introduce myself as a word magician who has the power to draw writing from each of them. One of my favourite activities is to produce some Animal Oracle Cards and Edgar Allen’s famous poem, particularly emphasising the idea of a raven having come tapping at our chamber door.
As I chat with them, as we listen to a reading of Poe’s ‘The Raven’ I suggest that everyone begin to draw, to write down words, identify feelings and consider sketching a raven.
My students at LaTrobe Secondary College really loved it when we gathered up our workbooks and went outside to observe the raven colony that called the school grounds home, watching, looking for leftovers from lunch.
While they were outside I told them to set up a vocabulary page in their workbook,
metallic black feathers
raucous, mischievous
Suspicious and confident beasts
Steadily on jagged wings
Feathers black against a burning sky
Spread your wings and ride the wind
Feathers spread wide, leaning into the wind, beak raised to the sky.
to draw an abandoned site and to imagine that it is inhabited by a murder of ravens.
At the completion of all of this activity, I ask students to share some of the words that have appeared on what were blank pages. Then I ask them what the magic trick was. They invariably say that the secret was that they were given an idea to work with.
We discuss how we might build upon a base idea.
- gather pictures and taking photographs
- keep sketching and build-up material before trying to write anything substantial.
- browse through the internet, research and find out about the symbolism of birds and the symbolism of the raven in particular.
- read about the Raven in mythology. For example, in the ‘Seven Ravens’ the little girl is prepared to endure a challenging pilgrimage to find her brothers.
- read the landmark gothic tale, The Birds, by Daphne du Maurier or watch the movie version. In this chilling tale the bird’s revolt against humankind. The story later became a Hitchcock movie – dated maybe, but still a good movie.
- keep adding to a vocabulary page.
- play with magnetic poetry to form some more ideas.
Having done all of this we write freely for twenty minutes making sure not to worry if the initial piece is incoherent or full of grammatical errors for this is only the beginning of the process. There are many more decisions to be made!
Perhaps you will, like me, be happy to find expression and make a statement by drawing. Or you might choose to take a series of photographs.
Maybe you will end up creating a graphic novel, write a play, make a video of reading a poem or whatever. The possibilities are endless.
Examples:
He Endured The Horror of Norfolk Island Penal Colony
Whatever difficulties Norfolk Island had in its early years, Macklin (whose ancestors came from Bandon, Co Cork, during the Famine) writes that: “Nothing had prepared them for their first taste of the empire’s colonial sadists, the execrable Joseph Foveaux.”
Edward Henry Butler’s remains lie in a very isolated rural cemetery at Joyces Creek in Central Victoria. This cemetery dates back to 1854.
The amount of information on the stone on his grave is extraordinary. It takes little researching to flesh out the story of Edward Henry Butler and to gain insight into what this man endured in his lifetime.
Apart from being transported to Sydney on the Neptune 3, Butler spent seven years on Norfolk Island.
Much has been written about this 18th Century hell. If convicts were perceived to ’cause trouble’, they were sent to remote places such as Norfolk Island, Port Macquarie and Moreton Bay. At these places, discipline could be very severe. Prisoners were forced to work from dawn to dusk at backbreaking tasks. If they disobeyed or tried to escape, they were whipped, chained in irons or sometimes executed. At Norfolk Island, the ‘harshest possible discipline short of death’ was imposed. So unpleasant were the conditions, that rebellions and uprisings were a regular occurrence.
In her book, ‘The Signature of All Things’, Elizabeth Gilbert documents the hardships endured by Alma Whittiker’s father on voyages with Captain Cook. This would have been luxury compared to the life Butler had on board the Neptune 3.
Norfolk Island is a popular tourist destination now but it cannot shake off its dark history. Norfolk Island has been rated as one of the world’s most haunted spots.
Fracturing Fairy Stories and Nursery Rhymes
“The realm of fairy-story is wide and deep and high and filled with many things: all manner of beasts and birds are found there; shoreless seas and stars uncounted; beauty that is an enchantment, and an ever-present peril; both joy and sorrow sharp as swords. In that realm a man may, perhaps, count himself fortunate to have wandered, but its very richness and strangeness tie the tongue of the traveller who would report them. And while he is there it is dangerous for him to ask too many questions, lest the gate should be shut and the keys be lost.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” in The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
“The fairy tale journey may look like an outward trek across plains and mountains, through castles and forests, but the actual movement is inward, into the lands of the soul. The dark path of the fairy tale forest lies in the shadows of our imagination, the depths of our unconscious. To travel to the wood, to face its dangers, is to emerge transformed by this experience. Particularly for children whose world does not resemble the simplified world of television sit-coms … this ability to travel inward, to face fear and transform it, is a skill they will use all their lives. We do children–and ourselves–a grave disservice by censoring the old tales, glossing over the darker passages and ambiguities…” — Terri Windling, “White as Snow: Fairy Tales and Fantasy,” in Snow White, Blood Red
Students love fractured fairy tales because the stories are familiar. When teaching children how to write a fractured fairy story I invariably begin by reading favourite fairy stories such as The Three Little Pigs and then present classic fractured versions to ensure that they understand the genre.
Following steps such as those outlined in T. P. Jaggers site, we work with a story such as Little Red Riding Hood or a Nursery Rhyme such as Humpty Dumpty. The results are a lot of fun and everyone enjoys reading and sharing their responses.
On the premise that there is no reason for the children to have all the fun I also work with Fractured Fairy Stories in Writing for Wellness courses. Participants spend time recalling and writing as much as they can remember about their favourite childhood fairy story and consider how this tale has actually impacted on their lives. Then we work to ‘adjust’ the narrative.
Another activity is to spend some time remembering the infamous scenes with the evil stepmother asking the famed “mirror mirror on the wall, who is the most beautiful of all?” Then we use this ancient image to consider other things characters may see in the mirror and what truths the demonic mirror might reveal.
Some Examples
Cinderella’s Life after the Wedding by Megan Warren
Goldilocks Was A Punk by Lisa Phoenix
The Invitation by A.M. Moscoso
Funny Bones
It’s Gallows Humor Thursday!
I hope these tickle your funny bones.
amm
Standing on a Literary Legend’s Shoulders
The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal–the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour…
Edgar Allen Poe Masque of the Red Death
In her book ‘Women Who Run With the Wolves’, Clarissa Pinkola Estes recalls a numinous dream in which she found herself standing on the shoulders of an old woman. When she suggested that she was young and that she should carry the older woman on her shoulders the woman quite firmly told her that “this is the way it is meant to be”.
All writers stand on the shoulders of those who have walked before them. The art of story writing is a very old medium and so new young storytellers are entering a medium that has been going on for millennia! When working with the start of Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘Masque of the Red Death’ young storytellers are not only learning from a master story writer. They are also learning to stand on the shoulders of others and to reference those who have influenced their writing.
Children love the ‘Masque of the Red Death’ and they know, from the outset, that this is not going to end well, that the Prince is not going to defeat the Red Death.
For this task, we listened to the beginning of the story and then
- Spent time drawing the castle and what we thought Red Death looked like.
- Brainstormed and thought about how Red Death would enter Prince Prospero’s fortress.
- Projected a week ahead and arrived on the scene as investigative news reporters.
- Wrote a headline!
- Submitted a news report!
- Considered other ways that we could use this information. Suggestions included writing a ballad or a poem, creating a graphic novel, producing a television script and preparing a feature article exploring ways in which Red Death was finally contained.
- Designed costumes for the ball.
More Edgar Allen Poe Stimuli
A Way to Feel Less Alone
Are you a writer, photographer, painter, sculptor, gastronomist, death doula or simply a fan of the macabre? We would love to have you join us and engage at Danse Macabre. This is just one project being offered to members of Bancroft Manor.
Visiting the Isla de la Munecas
IT LOOKS like the stuff of nightmares: a grotesque playground of mutilated dolls, many hanging limp from nooses, others with heads attached to spikes, all with soulless eyes staring blankly ahead. Personally, while I couldn’t wait to visit the bone church at Kutna Hora and wasn’t the least disturbed by all the human bones, I am not sure I would be up to visiting this place. Having said this I vividly recall assembling a ‘Who Killed Barbie’ cake on one beach holiday. We were with a large group who set up camp on a clifftop overlooking the Pacific Ocean and the cake featuring a mutilated Barbie was a huge hit at the time.
Mexico’s Isla de las Munecas, or “Island of the Dolls”, became an unlikely tourist attraction drawing thousands of tourists and photographers morbidly fascinated by the strange spectacle (check out the photos on the linked site). But it’s the tragic story behind the island that is perhaps more disturbing, and according to legend, it begins with the tragic death of an anonymous young girl more than 50 years ago.
According to reports, a man named Don Julian Santana left his wife and child one day and moved to an island on Teshuilo Lake in the famous Xochimilco canals to live out his years as a recluse. Upon arriving at the island, reportedly sometime in the 1950s, Santana discovered the body of a young girl who had drowned in a canal. He later found her toy doll floating nearby. Moved by the discovery of the girl’s body, and perhaps to appease her spirit, Santana set about transforming the whole island into a shrine dedicated to the lost soul. For decades he collected dolls by their hundreds, including baby dolls and even some Barbies, and decorated the island with their lifeless bodies.
Santana salvaged the dolls from the canals and garbage. He lived in a small cabin, where his photo and a few possessions are still on display, surrounded by trees and some 1500 of his decaying dolls. As word of the island spread Santana began accepting a small fee to show visitors around his peculiar home. Ghost stories are a part of local lore in the region, which gave way to spooky tales of the dolls coming alive at night, apparently consumed by the dead girl’s spirit.
But in a dark twist, in 2001, Santana’s nephew found him dead in a canal — in the same spot where Santana had decades earlier discovered the corpse of the girl that inspired his life’s work. As popular interest in the island and its dark legend grew, relatives of Santana questioned whether the dead girl really existed and suggested it was a figment of Santana’s imagination. But the strangeness of the legend behind Santana’s bizarre island has continued to fascinate the public. Isla de las Munecas is about 28km south of the centre of Mexico City. Visitors can catch a ferry there from the Embarcedero Cuemanco or Embarcadero Fernando Celada, and it’s about a four-hour round trip.
No matter what genre you choose to write in, be it crime or science fiction or even an autobiography you need to build a world for your story. Every writer needs to build a strong sense of place so that your readers can have a placeholder to flesh out the context in which a story is set. For example, the television series, Hinterland, so brilliantly depicts a part of Wales that you feel that you have been transported to this wild, wind swept, harsh part of the world.
If you’re writing a current-day story, you should know where it is set and what’s happening in the world around your main characters. Consider The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. For these stories to come alive, the main characters’ experiences had to be set in rich and textured worlds.
Surely the Isle of Dolls provides a rich back drop for a macabre story, perhaps involving hapless tourist taking photographs.
Empty
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it conscientiously.
Pascal
She was an explorer, a photographer a sometimes writer with no one in her life to notice if she never showed up after a day or a week or a month or ever again.
It had never occurred to her that this was a bad thing. That’s how she found these empty and abandoned. towns or maybe they found her, these concrete, brick and wooden corpses of dead little cities sitting alongside highways that tried to make their way to the outside world and tragically failed.
She was out on that Sunday looking for something to write about or maybe something to take pictures of for her library when she ended up on this particular road that simply ended and miles and miles of sand and nowhere stretched out in front of it.
Huddled there on the side of the Highway were the faded remains of a fast food stand that sold chicken in a basket and milkshakes – as promised by the weather worn giant plastic chicken in a blue and white basket perched precariously on the red tin roof.
There was the skeleton of a building across the street from the Chicken Stand that may have been a general store with a stack of empty shelves that served as it’s last remaining wall and a closed sign hanging from an empty socket where a window used to be.
Next to the all but dead store was a gas station with a faded blue horse painted on it’s side and a soda pop cooler with a missing door and an ice machine decorated with light blue snowflakes with it’s door chained shut
She slowed down and wondered about that chained ice machine- the chain was as rusted and worn as everything around it, but the lock was new. She wondered if anyone noticed it. If anyone had noticed it and just didn’t care enough to ask what it was they were looking at.
She stopped her Jeep and slowly backed up until she was right in front of the machine.
And it’s locked doors.
She shut her engine off. She unlatched her seatbelt and raised her hips off the seat and fished a scrunchie from her back pocket and tied her long dark hair back into a pony tail.
Her walk to the Ice Machine and it’s locked doors was a slow one. She looked up into the sky and she whistled. She wondered how far it was to the next rest stop. She wondered if it was almost lunch time because she was getting hungry.
When she got to the Ice Machine and it’s rusted lock she reached into her back pocket and took out a ring of little keys. She flipped through them and stopped at one with a little red dot and fit it into the lock.
It clicked and as it did she closed her eyes and lifted her face to the sun and smiled.
She unhitched the lock and opened the door- just a little. Just enough to let a little light inside and just enough room for her to place her eye right up against the little opening so that she could get a peek inside.
Satisfied she carefully closed the door and locked it again.
Because, we can ask ourselves, who on earth chains ice machine doors shut in abandoned towns on forgotten highways where nobody goes?
An explorer, a photographer a sometimes writer with no one in her life to notice if she never showed up after a day or a week or a month or ever again.
That’s who.
Make Descansos to Mark the Macabre
I first learned about the concept of Descansos when I read Clarissa Pinkola Estes ‘Women Who Run With Wolves’.
Estes describes how when you travel in Old Mexico, New Mexico, southern Colorado, Arizona, or parts of the South, you will see little white crosses by the roadside. These are descansos, resting places. The concept of marking resting places is not confined to the United States or Mexico. They may be found in Greece, Italy and many other countries, including Australia.
Recently I photographed this small cross that so clearly marks a spot for someone. It is not in a cemetery but in a reserve which memorializes the gold rush in this region. As I took the photograph I was actually thinking about the very dark side of the Victorian Goldfields that have been so well documented by Goldfields Guide – Exploring the Victorian Goldfields. I considered ways to mark, document and lay to rest some of the important moments in the history of this region in Victoria that so many choose to forget.
It may sound macabre but it can be cathartic to mark, with crosses, events that have impacted your life or, for that matter, macabre world events which have changed the course of history.
Metaphorically perch yourself high in a pine tree, in a place where you can see the whole picture. Mark things which still need to be mourned and consider spending time noting what has seemingly been forgotten, but which like the spirit of Joan of Arc lives on. For example, indigenous Australians are well aware of the trauma of colonisation but those of us whose ancestors were forcibly bought to this country in chains can forget what they were forced to endure and how those events changed the course of history for everyone involved.
Working with Descansos
Danse Macabre 