For the Birds
Sponsored by Salt Spring Arts, we welcomed spring with this evening dedicated to the inspiration of birds, from Kwakiutl Raven Clan legend to performance poetry, from multi-part harmony to songbird calls.
The idea for this event came out of a conversation I had with Caroni Young whose nine-member a cappella choir Tongue In Cheek had been working up a diverse set of pieces tracing the influence of birds on human music and song. Why not put together a program combining her choir’s pieces with other bird-inspired work?
I collaborated with Salt Spring Arts executive director Yael Wand to pull the evening together.
Besides Tongue In Cheek and me, there were:
- Christine Hunt, a Kwakiutl noblewoman and member of the Raven Clan, shared a legend of Raven.
- Naturalist and nature soundscape recordist Ren Ferguson spoke about bird communication and shared immersive recordings, drawing on her extensive local fieldwork.
- Spoken word poet Taryn Muldoon spent a winter working at the Wild at Heart Wildlife Refuge in Lively, Ontario. She performed pieces from a bird poem cycle based on her wildlife rescue work and featured in her first chapbook of poetry.
- Birds feature frequently in the work of singer-songwriter Yael Wand who, as well as co-organizing the night, took the stage to share three of her bird-inspired songs.
- Poet Rowan Percy read from her bird-inspired work including a piece about Burgoyne Bay.
- Singer-songwriter and entertainer Alan Moberg shared a song from his bird-focused repertoire.
I opened the night with a poem I wrote for the event:
Incantation
To us humans, birds have always been messengers and harbingers. They awaken in us a yearning and we look to them for what we imagine but can never achieve—a perfect beauty, the freedom of flight. Ahead of this event I was reviewing a list of threatened and endangered birds in British Columbia and, as I read, the names themselves seemed to me a sort of poetry of the vanishing but essential world. I wove them into a lament and invocation.
Feathers bright, wings of flight,
soaring on the edge of sight,
far, far above, come circling down
to nest and forest, lake and town.
Black-crowned Night-heron, Forster’s Tern
Do we remember? Do we learn?
Short-tailed Albatross, Swainson’s Hawk
Are we good for more than talk
Peregrine Falcon, Thick-billed Murre
when oceans rise and portents stir
Vesper Sparrow, Burrowing Owl
and seething fates are on the prowl
Upland Sandpiper, Greater Sage-Grouse
here at the door, here at our house?
White-headed Woodpecker, Clark’s Grebe, Horned Lark
Who will ward off the coming dark?
O ravelling skein, o world forlorn,
forlorn of life once freely born.
Without, within. Those found, those lost.
Spun together. The prize. The cost.
Tapestry from a single strand—
from leaf to wing, from fin to hand.
Woven threads of dream and clay,
of wind and flight, of night and day.
Take heed of sky. The songbird’s call.
Feathered, and finned, and grand, and small.
Woodcut by Sami artist John Savio (1902-1938) is in the public domain.
Photo description:
Wild geese (Tsjuænnjágat) woodcut.