I am thrilled to be scheduled to perform at A Tide of Ghosts: Esotericism and Art beyond Fact and Fiction this October 24th, 2024!

"A two-day multidisciplinary conference exploring how the use of fictionings, in various entanglements of art, politics, and esotericism, bleeds into the real and how the two relate, if they ever are truly separate.

The conference marks the first conference of the Scandinavian Network for the Academic Study of Western esotericism (SNASWE). It is co-organized by the Novo Nordic funded research project Twisting the Fabric of Space: On the Art and Politics of the Hidden which has Kasper Opstrup as its PI and The Copenhagen Centre for the Study of Theosophy and Esotericism headed by Tim Rudbog."


I'll be performing a 20 minute piece down, black, down, black, down:  "An interdisciplinary performance of dramatic poetry and dance for the Lord of the Underworld. Via my poems, I give testimony to my encounters with Underworld Kings: Fionnbharr, King of Connacht at Cnoc Meadha and Pluto, at the Plutonion at Eleusis. At times I speak as the Goddess herself, sometimes as a human woman, sometimes as a more-than-human creature. I will perform a devotional dance that invites you, the audience, to experience what I experience at these sites."

To support my journey to Copenhagen and to Uppsala, Sweden:
paypal.me/aepril

At the Oscar Wilde House for the Poet's Salon. Lovely night performing and listening to poetry seance style! Thank you Caoimhe LaVelle.

Bellydance drum solo to "Moon Dance" choregraphed by Ashley Lopez. At Culture Night at Charleville Castle, Offaly, Ireland. It was a great night of dance and fun!

"This then shall be thy lot," said she, "...in the shape of an eel I will come beneath thy feet in the ford; so shalt thou fall." -the words of The Morrigan, Tain Bo Cuailnge,
translated by Joseph Dunn, 1914. (Fadas omitted due to formatting limitation)

A bit from my performance I Guard Your Death at ESSWE8 at @universitycollegecork. The event was organized by Dr. Jenny Butler @spiral_eyed_grrl

More about the performance

You'll please forgive the monitor! The theatre is generally used for academic presentations so it was adapted.

Music: Salt Point by Julia Kent

I'll be performing at the 8th Biannual Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, July 7 at 3pm at University College Cork.

I Guard Your Death.

Sorcery, Prophecy, Otherworld.
A medial, ritual performance of dance and poetry.
Via dance and chanted poetry Aepril will give testimony to her communications and devotional workings with The Morrigan, her sorcerous magicks, her poems and prophecies, as well as interactions with the Sídhe, necromantic encounters, and initiations via the landscape. She will draw on Irish source texts such as the Cath Maige Tuired, documented folklore, charms and spells, approaching them with night-perception and weaving them into an embodied, oracular dream of invoked and shifting presences.
Aepril is an Irish-American diaspora descendant; she is also an immigrant living in Sligo, Ireland. This performance speaks to the recalibration of her energetic body as a Witch via engagement with the land and spirits, ancestral connections remembered, shifting cultural perspectives, a quest for sovereignty and belonging, and increasing feelings of urgency and outrage concerning ecology and kinship with our non-human relations. She draws on her lived experience dancing in stone circles and forests of Ireland. 

I've uploaded my dance-poetry performance of "Intimate" to YouTube.

It's a private link for now, but you can share it if you like.

This was performed a few years ago. What a wonderful night with amazing curators and a really receptive and involved audience!  After the performance there is a Q & A session included which has some very insightful comments made by the audience. You'll have to excuse my inarticulateness however, as I was coming down from the trance was not quite grounded yet!

Even though its a few years old, I wanted to include it here to share with you as I update things on this site. My marriage, the pandemic and assorted other things have of course caused a pause in my performance career. (But I'm writing a hell of a lot!)

You can always see my most up to date workings on my Instagram @aeprilraven

𝑰 𝒎𝒆𝒕 𝒎𝒚𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇 𝒃𝒆𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒆𝒏 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑫𝒂𝒚
& 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝑵𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕
𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑰 𝒘𝒓𝒐𝒕𝒆 𝒎𝒚𝒔𝒆𝒍𝒇 𝒊𝒏 𝒎𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒄--
𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒊𝒏𝒌

My Instagram @aeprilraven

My poem ᚎ Straif is published in The Druid's Cauldron, an online journal of Irish and Celtic folklore based writings!

I wrote this poem as a personification of Blackthorn. I drew from Irish folklore about the tree, my own relationship and magickal experiences with it, the Ogham few ᚎ.

All that said, it's not a didactic lesson on folklore: it's an artistic and mystical interpretation and expression.

It's more than that, too. It's the voice of the Dark Goddess; as she speaks to me and at times through me. It's a plant that I feel a strong kinship with, and which, though vilified as "dangerous", I have found to be very healing as well as challenging.

Read the poem