 I'll be performing at the 8th Biannual Conference, ESSWE8, 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.
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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. 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  Self portrait as the Morrigan. Place: my backyard, Co Leitrim, Ireland. Come Fairies, take me out of this dull world, for I would ride with you upon the wind and dance upon the mountains like a flame! --William Butler Yeats It's been a while since I've posted here...and that's because I've been busy moving country! It's taken me the past year to move and settle in, with Gwyddie in tow! Yes, he went on a plane. Yes, he was ok. :) I almost had a heart attack, but he was fine. Art. And Magick. And Nature. And so many things I love, and that I have been connecting with in new ways since my arrival. I feel that my whole energetic system is recalibrating, adjusting to and taking in the land and its history and wonders. As it happens, my ancestry (as I understand it so far) originates in part from this place. My ancestors left Sligo during the Great Hunger. I have been developing a new relationship to plants and witchcraft here, and to the Goddess Morrigan in specific. I was priveleged to have the Scarlet Tongue Project come from the US to film me as part of their documentary on women and anger (as expressed through female artists). I danced as the Morrigan and was interviewed. There will be more about that this coming spring/summer. I've had a profound Samhain season beginning with a visit to the Morrigan's Cave, aka Oweynagat, aka Hells Gate. It's an underground passage located within the ancient royal complex site of Ráth Crúachan, seat of the great warrior Queen Medb. (It is written in Ogham inside the cave entrance: ‘of Fraech, son of Medb’.) The Morrigan is said to come out of the opening each Samhain; going into the cave---and coming out--was a moving and transformative experience, bonding me further to the land. I was honored to also invoke the Dark Goddess as The Morrigan with dance and a new poem at the Samhain ritual in Belfast. And, I was priviedged to afterward explore and climb Sliabh Crúb in the Mountains of Mourne, sacred to The Callieach (Winter hag goddess) and visit Legannay Dolmen, sacred to the goddess Áine. There's been so much to adjust to...its been challenging and overwhelming!  parting the Veil  For She who is Great   The body of the Goddess; The Morrigan's Cave. Holy place from which She is said to emerge each Samhain as the year dies and is reborn. To enter or to exit you will be on your belly and your knees. Leave nothing behind...but don't forget a sacrifice.  Legananny Dolmen. Doorway to the Otherworld and portal tomb. Sacred to the Goddess Áine, Irish deity of love, sovereignty, dance and resilience. Liagán Áine: Her standing stone. That stone has been sitting atop that little point for thousands of years!  At Glastonbury Abbey during my visit to England (photo taken by Paul Weston)  Sheemore hill, the Big Hill of the Sidhe  Abandoned cottage. Angelica grows outside.  our backyard   In the Lucid Dream Room at the University of Northampton, UK. At Trans-States : The Art of Crossing Over
 Image from my performance as Da'ath at Sub Rosa, NYC. Photo by Dena Rose.
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