Faerieworlds Live From Home 2020

 

Faerie News 2020

Congrats Eugen Bacon on her book Black Moon (IFWG Publishing Australia): graphic speculative flash fiction. Preorder here

Celebrated author Sophie Masson launched a new website with a focus on her fairytale books, especially those inspired by France.

Ethereal electro-medieval band Dandelion Wine released their new album Le Cœur.

Most recent reading, recommended:

Shadowfell (first in a trilogy) by Juliet Marillier, in the genre of high fantasy: superb storytelling with powerful shapeshifting, balancing adventure with luminosity and emotive suspense. Her book of fairy tales Mother Thorn is due on Serenity Press soon. Her blog

The Swan Maiden (Blessed Bee Books) by Serene Conneeley: an Australian fairy tale, spinning on transformation tale types of selkies and swans, with knowledge of the Cygnus atratus, especially the black swan native to this continent. 

[Praise for other books, e.g. the gorgeously illustrated fairytale series by Kate Forsyth & Lorena Carrington, or daring phantasmagoria of Eugen Bacon, is in earlier posts.]

Feature: Faerieworlds

Faerieworlds invited me to perform again! The 3-day Faerieworlds Live From Home spree of eco-social fundraising was full of joy, warmth, inspiration, mirth, transcontinental reunions and discoveries.

Where: Based in Oregon, USA, Faerieworlds is the world’s largest, longest-running fairy festival, established nearly 20 years ago. Amidst the pandemic, this was its first venture online: here

What: Musing in music, art, imagination, it’s a gathering of tribes who revel in costume to the call ‘Live your Legend!’: a ‘bonnaroo for Middle Earth’, a shindig for Elfland, a carousel of elementals.

Who: In 2020, the lineup features troubadours, dancers, storytellers, puppeteers, illustrators and other artists from around the world, from folk/pop/rock legends like Roger Daltrey of The Who, Don McLean, Donovan and the Frouds, to members of platinum German contemporary-medieval bands like Faun, Spanish faery siren Priscilla Hernandez, Woodland, RosaMundi [scroll for more!] and fascinating Scandinavians such as Martine Kraft and Songleilkr. Even a storytelling cook, Wotan!

I was proud to be among Australians including soulful Brother Angus and Wiccan siren Wendy Rule, whose new double album Persephone uncannily suits our era of hibernation. Her incantatory song cycle traces the ancient Greek deity’s descent to the underworld. Collect the eco-wallet & more

Keen to float in waves of incantation, to dream with marine life? Try Little Star, whose beautiful album Celestine is at Bandcamp.

Ready for a possessed Hurdy-Gurdy? Witness Guilhem Desq. How about gothic dream-pop? Jive to Abney Park covering ‘The Never-ending Story’. Activism, anyone? Casey Neill is doing great work with Black Lives Matter, while Hudost is helping districts affected by voter suppression. Its award-winning album Of Water + Mercy comes with videos & fundraisers for social action.

Whilst naming only a few participants, I loved every act. 

Each artist gave something unique.

Full billing sheet: Faerieworlds 

Links to artists’ sites: PORTL artists page 

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Singer-storyteller in Faerieworlds, Marya Stark, inspired a new phrase: ‘singer-teller’. She has a new album entitled Sapphire, with a fabulous video. Details
To quote Marya, pictured in blue below:

‘I believe this music, celebrating the restoration of the balancing of the waters of life, is a nourishing remedy for the times we are in. I offer this labor of love as a healing salve, a song of remembrance of an inner-alchemy... ’ Her concept ‘emerged from a vision ... many years ago of a light sound sphere encoded with prayer and magic from another world, sent through time and lodged inside of the glaciers to sit for thousands of years... When the time would come, the thawing of the glaciers would release the sound codes of these original crystalline alchemies, awakening the sapphire prayer, and return clarity to the waters of life, supporting the thawing of the frozen heart of humanity to fully grieve, feel, and recollect the soul fragments to live integrally with the nature muses of earth. ’

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Below: Faerieworlders Priscilla Hernandez (Yidneth) from Spain & Kelly Miller-Lopez (Woodland, RosaMundi), Faerieworlds co-founder from Oregon & Billy Scudder the resident Green Man

 

Be sure to catch Priscilla’s new single ‘Surrender’ and subscribe to her You Tube channel or follow her on other sites, starting here. As I type, her latest tweet is about unicorns.

Most artists in this feature are at Bandcamp and/or Patreon. Keep faeries safe at home or solitary groves: support them online. 

Priscilla’s imagery expresses custodianship of nature & grace.

Above with moss: Priscilla Hernandez

Below with leaves: Billy Scudder, resident Green Man of Faerieworlds

Kelly Miller-Lopez presented new songs from her solo incarnation RosaMundi at Faerieworlds Live From Home 2020. With sweet passion, she told us that the Latin for squirrels (her muses, whom she rescues and keeps as pets) is Skia Oura, which translates as ‘shadow tale’, relating to ‘fairy tale’. (Ok, so I’ve verified this: ‘Squirrel’ has been in English since the 14th century. It comes from the Greek ‘skiouros’ from ‘skia,’ meaning ‘shadow,’ and ‘oura’ meaning ‘tail.’) She sang of a boy from the trees with the forest in his eyes, and a Guardian of the Wood:

Pics above & right: Priscilla Hernandez (in Spain) watching Kelly Miller Lopez (Oregon) and me Louisa John-Krol (Australia) during Faerieworlds Live From Home 2020.

Below: Kelly Miller-Lopez piping in Woodland and singing in my set 2009 at Faerieworlds. Photos by Byron Dazey.

More about Priscilla’s music:

Yidneth

More about Kelly’s music:

The Woodland Realm

Below: Seasons of Elfland by Woodland, 

an album on which we three united. 

Available here

So... inspired by Faerieworlds, I assembled a digital album Wisp and Sentinel. This is one of several offerings I’ll be making for Faerieworlders between now and the 20-year Anniversary 2021. Its cover is this photo of me from my Faerieworlds Live From Home set, 2020. Available at Bandcamp.

Why Faerieworlds? Amidst strife and sorrow, it is worth pausing to refresh our souls. Rekindle kindred kin. Uplift our spirits. There are struggles ahead. Battles to save endangered forests, species, democracies. True faerie lore is not escapist. It’s about delving deeper - falling in love with the world. Renewing wonder. Tolkien gave us this metaphor: Ents fought for their forests, alongside Hobbits, Humans, Wizards, Dwarves and Elves, those guardians of the arts. Time to unite. Lately in our allied nations it’s been a struggle to preserve Civil Rights that minorities had only begun to enjoy, or at least glimpse. Now, kleptocratic syndicates try to split progressives into factions, in the playbook of ‘divide and conquer’. Fey spirit is more about gathering, forming circles, yes, rings.

How: Full day re-streams are now at PORTL. Let Faerieworlds be your welcome portal (pun intended) to a new way of gathering fey tribes. 

A Mellow Yellow Hello:

Remember the classic ‘Mellow Yellow’, by Donovan? A pioneer of psychedelic folk-pop songwriting, he is an honorary guest of Faerieworlds Live From Home!

This spiel outlines how Donovan was friends with the Beatles, accompanied them on trance-spiritual explorations and taught them finger-picking techniques for songs like ‘Blackbird’ in The White Album.

That song has a sweet spot in my heart, for a friend in my college days taught it to me on the riverbank of her home, her hazel eyes speckled with sunlight; then decades later, a nephew learned to play it while recovering from cancer, and bravely performed it.

My own composition ‘Blackbird’ (co-written with hubby Mark Krol 1990s, after listening to Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations’), released by French fairy-world label Prikosnovenie circa 2001 (on Ariel), features a string quartet. Someone uploaded it here. It is also in my Faerieworlds Live set.

Donovan has performed with Faerieworlds hosts Woodland, an honour I am proud to share. On the last day of Faerieworlds Live From Home 2020, he read poetry to us, sang with his wife Linda and held an oak sprig in his garden, sharing with us the wisdom of acorns.

Faerieworlds festivals bring imagination, art, interfaith and ecological respect to new generations. They are family-friendly. In three days at their 2009 encampment, I did not see any litter at all.

Through Faerieworlds’ Mythic Workshops this year, 2020, I discovered acclaimed storyteller & percussionist Aishya Sinclaire, whose book Brown Sugar Fairies I purchased from her website. I also recommend her blog.

Another reason to join the Faerieworlds community is to discover magical online vendors, who would once have spread across fields and groves in a sea of flags, stripes and rainbows.

Faerieworlds is a realm where innocence, beauty, hope, kindness, diverse spiritualities, varied instruments and zany zest for life can thrive. A world where we may still sway in the saffron of Mellow Yellow.

Thank you everyone for making it happen, especially our hosts Kelly & Emilio Miller-Lopez and Robert Gould. Special thanks to Molly Niffin and all the other fey volunteers.

Long live the Faerie Realm!

- Louisa John-Krol, 2020

Faerieworlds - Spheres article

Faerieworlds 

From Summer green to fallen leaves, 

Oh light the sylvan pyre, 

For the day is red and ripe upon the branch

Verses quoted in italics throughout this feature are by Kelly Miller-Lopez, from her song ‘Shadows’ on the CD Seasons in Elfland by Woodland. I was honoured to be a guest singer on this album.

This article appeared in an Australian magazine Spheres, after my first performance at Faerieworlds in Oregon, USA, as an invited guest on the main stage, 2009, halfway through their establishment of nearly two decades. Their 20-year Anniversary is 2021.

Imagine thousands of guests in costume, sharing mythological knowledge, recipes and wares, weaving a beribboned pentacle and uniting in a Spiral Dance. Aromatic scents waft between tents: from Casbah teahouse to the Kava bar, your nostrils are assailed by vegan sushi, eggplant marsala, pineapple, Castle Kettle Corn, Turkish coffee and homemade chocolate with local berries. Your sensibility is flung, in eddies of enchantment, into one realm after another: Narnia, Earthsea, Middlearth, Elysium, Camelot, Wonderland, Woodstock; Knauf’s Carnivàle; or during Myth Maker fire rituals, that cult classic The Wicker Man (minus the sacrifice! – however, a band called The Wicker Men really is playing). 

Strangers shake hands, embrace, or smile into each others’ eyes, perceiving mutual recognition that some explain by past lives, others by the collective vibe of a great event. Welcome to Faerieworlds! We are at Buford Park Range by Mount Pisgah in Eugene, Oregon, USA, 2009, for the world’s largest fairy festival. 

As Eugene’s media sees it, Faerieworlds is ‘where goths dance with hippies’. Many more scenes grace the fair: folk-rock, darkwave, modern primitive, psychedelic punk, ambient, contemporary medieval; with environmentalists, vegetarians, vegans, folklorists, fantasy writers and pagans including wiccans, native healers, classicists, or fusions of the above. In one sweeping glance you’d see a shock of coloured hair, studs, boots and tattoos of dragons, beside flower children in garlands, middle-aged dads with pixie ears or wizard staffs, Pre-Raphaelites, ancient wise-women in flowing skirts, stilt-walking fauns, beach babes in starfish bikinis, teenage centaurs, magicians in top hats and green-men clad in leaves.

Myth Maker gives thanks to the elements and other resident spirits.  

The summer’s gift, the fire in the wood 

Sometimes a breeze rolled down the mountain through forests of fir and pine, to relieve the searing heat, lifting tent flaps, flags and banners. We first felt it during the Opening Ceremony: an invisible kiss, carried by sylphs of the air, or summoned from Ceridwen’s cauldron and the music of Woodland, while visitors, vendors and performers took each other’s hands in greeting, or raised their arms to the sky. We felt the forest had bestowed its blessing.  

and the circle grows each time around for all within are spiral bound 

Guests of Honour were Brian and Wendy Froud. Since childhood I’ve loved Brian’s book Faeries, now in its 25th Anniversary edition. Its co-illustrator, Alan Lee, went on to design sets for The Lord of the Rings movies. Froud joined Jim Henson on the pre-digital film classic The Dark Crystal, where he fell in love with puppeteer Wendy Froud. She handed her craft on to their son Toby, who was the baby in the film Labyrinth, starring David Bowie as the Goblin King. Froudian books include The Runes of Elfland, Good Faeries/Bad Faeries, Goblins of Labyrinth and Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairies. My first meeting with them was at Trolls et Legendes festival in Belgium where, as with Faerieworlds, we presented a video created by Brian and Toby for my music. Their imagery illuminates lightshows by Woodland, the folk-rock band that founded Faerieworlds. 

Below: photos by Byron Dazey of me (Louisa John-Krol) with puppets & puppeteers at Faerieworlds 2009

Below: Woodland with my guest appearance, 2009

For there is a summer in each life, 

‘Til the shadows ride the samhain wind 

To a twilight celebration

Woodland’s hometown Eugene is no stranger to folk festivals. The Grateful Dead’s Oregon Country Fair, a sort of Woodstock attracting around 40,000 attendees in various states of consciousness or undress, dating to the 1960’s, is an American icon. Faerieworlds leapt to national attention when Fox News reported the outbreak of a ‘hippy virus’. (Apparently the notion of fairies urgently squatting in bushes amused O’Reilly’s gang, but was greeted with the quip, ‘we took our wings off’.) Ironically, as Faerieworlds hosts braced for an onslaught, membership soared; apparently for liberal Americans, anything Fox attacks is worth exploring. 

Since its inception eight years ago, under stewardship of Woodland musicians Emilio and Kelly Miller-Lopez, the festival has expanded from 1,000 attendees to 15,000. Robert Gould of Imaginosis later joined. Together they employ more than 400 people. [NB: these figures were current at the writing of this article a decade ago.] Whilst marketing is based on the internet, its community is in tune with ancient methods and organic materials. Wood-turning, sculpture, puppetry and storytelling, call upon crafting long held by pagan cultures. In keeping with the aim for a soft carbon footprint, there was scarcely any litter: proof that with enlightened effort, large crowds may ‘harm none’. As hosts advised, ‘look and listen… you will see soaring hawks, ravens, owls and flights of geese, you may even hear the howl of a coyote. And as you dance under the stars and rising moon, remember… the wonder of nature that is the true essence of faerie. This is why we come together to dance and celebrate the turning of the seasons and the enchantment imbued in wildness.’ 

Never shall I forget faces glimpsed high in windblown trees, or flights of birds as we sang of them. Mysteries of a fairy field… the natural playground of Kelly Kelly Miller-Lopez, co-founder of Faerieworlds & Woodland: lyricist, singer, harpist, dancer & now soloist of RosaMundi.

She seeds dreams within her herbs, 

 And ancient grains of wisdom in her wine 

Below: Kelly Miller-Lopez (Woodland) while I sang with them at Faerieworlds 2009; photos by Byron Dazey, USA

Recommended links for more info & updates:

Faerieworlds website

Faery Host band Woodland

Faerieworlds Live From Home 2020 at their new platform, PORTL

Author’s note: This article was printed in an Australian magazine, Spheres. I wrote it after performing on the main stage at Faerieworlds (solo & with Woodland) in America, following a shared billing with them at Trolls et Legendes in Belgium during 2009, all by invitation of the hosts.

My albums have appeared on foreign indie record labels, and are online. 

Bandcamp - selection & new digital album Wisp and Sentinel

Former faery label, in France 

Louisa John-Krol Website - under redesign: view on desktop for now

Fey greetings from Australia - Louisa John-Krol

Of Djinn, Druids & Divas

Faery News

Vale:

Djinn died in February 2020 peacefully in my lap at home by mercy of vets, after a valiant struggle with two conditions and 15 years of a beautiful life. Darling Djinn (Genie, Jinn-Jinnee) is the first fairy lion Mark & I rescued together. A child we never birthed, she is also a muse and familiar, profoundly missed, immortally beloved. Please understand that while many folk are brimming with energy on the internet through clubs and courses, I crave solace in seclusion, with gratitude for the time shared with Djinn. Blessings be to Basht (Bastet), Artemis-Diana, Inanna-Ekeshkigal-Ishtar, St Francis, Brigid, such deities who care; also the Whirling Dervishes, dancing Jinniyah, dwellers in the Temples of the Jaguar, my own fey enchantresses like Escalder of Elderbrook, and ailurophiles the world over. Thanks Mark, and Djinn's closest feline friend Dulcinea, who keeps vigil. May the fey ones sing of them afar in the sisterlands. Grace protect you, Djinn. Many are the names of where we may meet again: Elfland, Mag Mell, Elysium, Alam Al Mithal, Isles of the Blest, being a few, whelming worlds the while. We love you forever, Djinn.

Djinn with me (Louisa John-Krol)
[Taken before she was weened from outdoors! All our fairy lions are now purely indoor dwellers.]

Recommendations & Commendations: 

Kristoffer Hughes, Welsh Druid

Priest of the Anglesey Druid Order

& Author on Llewellyn Books

all photos with kind permission of Kristoffer

  

Recently I read The Journey into Spirit - A Pagan's Perspective On Death, Dying & Bereavement, by Kristoffer Hughes, a Welsh druid priest who has worked at morgues in service to Her Majesty's coroner for a quarter of a century, also at funerals as a celebrant.

I recommend this inspiring, compassionate, compelling, eloquent book, which I received as a gift nearly a year before Djinn's death. The gift came from Adrienne Piggott, founder and singer/ songwriter of South Australian mythic rock band Spiral Dance.

After more reflection, I'll attempt a review. The philosophical complexities (with which I mostly agree, if not entirely) deserve more than a rushed, gushy response.

Publisher's website, Llewellyn Books

Kristoffer Hughes

Reilly McCarron opens Meadowlark Soundscapes

Congrats to folklorist, musician, playwright and quintessential faerie bard Reilly McCarron for opening her new production business Meadowlark Soundscapes and releasing her exquisite soundtrack for three audio books in a series read by fairy tale doyenne Kate Forsyth. Read more about their collaboration later in this posting, together with a review of the concomitant books.

First, let's explore Reilly's sonic realm. Her new website at Meadowlark Soundscapes opens with this introduction:

'Welcome to the realm of the Orchestrina!

Providing bespoke boutique audio production, Reilly McCarron is a musician, composer, sound recordist, and audio mixer with over 10 years experience creating tailor-made soundscapes, soundtracks, songs, stories, sound effects, and bewitching mixing to suit your audio requirements.

Let's bring your soundscape to life.'

Reilly McCarron with her fairy tale harp

I was fortunate to meet Reilly through the Australian Fairy Tale Society, of which we each served as president. (She is its co-founder.) Since then I've had the pleasure of listening to her music, which carries a range of subtle changes in tone and characterisation, from mystery to whimsy, ghostliness and vaudevillian capers. One moment she plays a gypsy with sensual, come-hither charm; the next, a wise crone or a willowy sprite. Her subject matter ranges from spinning wheels to goblin feasts; if called to hobnob with silver spooners on their yachts, beware! A tang of wit is likely to perch on her musical cocktail glass.

Reilly McCarron is accredited with the Australian Storytelling Guild. Further, she gained a Graduate Diploma in Australian Folklife through Curtin University, and has presented academic papers at the National Folklore Conference, and the inaugural Monash Fairy Tale Salon.

Reilly McCarron

She is a Bard with the Order of Bards, Ovates, and Druids.

Her magical life has included traversing the Fairy Tale Route through Germany with her husband, recording interviews and taking photos for her journal along the way.

In her business 'faerie bard', she performed retellings of folk and fairy tales designed for adult audiences, and made personalised story CDs. (She also creates works for children.)

Reilly has published stories, articles and poems, including with 'The Griffith Review', 'Timeless Tales Magazine', and Museum Victoria's journal 'Play and Folklore'.

It is with delight that I announce her participation - via lyrics - in our forthcoming national anthology South of the Sun - Australian fairy tales for the 21st century - as well as in another project I'm engendering involving music and a book, North of the Moon, announced elsewhere in this post.

Reilly’s 2012 one-woman multimedia play Sleeping Kingdom, Waking Beauty toured interstate, including at The Butterfly Club in Melbourne and Sydney’s Fringe Festival. Reviewers praised the production for its artistic complexity, humour, and insight. 

Nowadays can be found at Meadowlark Soundscapes.

Lorena Carrington wins a national Fairy Tale award

Lorena Carrington

Congrats to fey photographic illustrator Lorena Carrington, for winning the 2020 Australian Fairy Tale Society Award. I proudly nominated her. Later in this post below, I've integrated some of my appraisal from that nomination. At the same time, I commend the other nominees, Juliet Marillier and Serene Colleeney, both wonderful authors of fairytale/fantasy. Back to Lorena shortly, in the review segment of this post.

Eugen Bacon, doyenne of phantasmagoria

Congrats on fey speculative fiction doyenne Eugen Bacon  (pictured below) on being elected to the Board of Directors at the Australian Society of Authors.

Eugen is my favourite Australian writer, who comes across to me as a kind of literary alchemist mixing genres of magic-realism, sci-fi, fairytale and fantasy, spiced with phantasmagoric romance.

She has won countless awards and fellowships, along with the Katharine Susannah Prichard (KSP) Emerging Writer-in-Residence 2020, presents workshops with Writers Victoria, and has a PhD in Creative Writing.

Eugen Bacon

Eugen's published books include Writing Speculative Fiction - Creative and Critical Approaches (Macmillan International) and Claiming T-Mo (Meerkat Press), both of which I fervently recommend. More books are en route into publication over the next year.

Her gorgeous poetry collection Love Struck has already reappeared in a new edition with a new title, Her Bitch Dress at Ginninderrapress Press, available here 

[Eugen's writing featured in detail earlier at this blog, Australian Fairy Review]

Eugen's website

News from Spanish ethereal singer-artist Priscilla Hernandez

Priscilla Hernandez

Congrats Priscilla Hernandez on the sonic-visual beauty she continues to exude in videos. I received her news with these exquisite photos from her this year, when I invited her to contribute news.

Yes, it was Spring in Spain - and who sweeter to represent it?

Then the pandemic landed, and... well, I'm now in a panic as to how all my friends/listeners/collaborators in Europe are faring, but for now let's delve into these offerings from talented Priscilla, who is a composer, multi-instrumentalist and illustrator:

She now has her discography and latest singles on bandcamp, an excellent platform, here

Her patreon page

A single by Priscilla on spotify (also on bandcamp) - look out for a video on it too!

Or try her youtube channel.

You can also find Priscilla on Facebook and other social media.

Wishing good health to our friends in Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Greece and other parts of Europe & beyond... I miss you. And I will come back to you in this fairy blog.

In my soul, you bloom evermore.

My own Faerie news:

Our intercultural anthology South of the Sun - Australian fairy tales for the 21st century with illustrations by 13 visual artists with 40 tales, songs or poems for YA & adult readership, has moved through content-editing and copy-editing. Chief illustrator Lorena Carrington has assigned select tales to illustrators, while a lovely draft Foreword has come from Robyn Floyd. Due to the pandemic, our release date moved from Spring 2020 to Autumn 2021. Additionally, I can report that I've finished sequencing written pieces into the agreed order, and for the next fortnight will continue cross-checking every doc, line by line, word by word, letter by letter, before it goes to my fey comrades for further perusal. Contracts are being drawn up and the last protocols finalised with surprise inclusions yet to be announced, hopefully by Spring. Then it's off to proofreading and typesetting. Thanks to our patrons for your generosity and goodwill.

Independently of that, a little trio is compiling an album entitled North of the Moon, music by three minstrels from three Australian States - Reilly McCarron (New South Wales), Adrienne Piggott (South Australia) and me, Louisa John-Krol (Victoria) - with thematic focus on fairy tales - of the ancient, elemental kind. Our range of instruments spans harp, mandolin, guitars, dulcimer, accordion, keyboards, sansula and our voices, to name a few.

My new Louisa John-Krol website is in creation by Kimberly Brown (designer of my Elderbrook digipak and Elderbrook portal), for compatibility with mobile devices.

The current site's designer is abiding with a critical illness in Belgium. We love his art! So once the newbie is ready, we'll retain the earlier creation with minimal text as a serene parallel archive in respect for Karl's legacy. And gratitude. Oceans, mists and mountains of it. Yes, I mean the site (pictured below) by Belgian artist Karl Delandsheere (Made by Karl) with its silky dragon waterfall and golden feline eyes in the sky, shifting in antique viewfinder style:

Louisa's current website - image by Karl Delandsheere, Made by Karl, Belgium

Review of 

Wiser Than Evening 

- Quotations From Fairytales, Poetry And Literature

illustrated by Lorena Carrington (Serenity Press)

Introduction to Lorena Carrington:

Publishing with Serenity Press (a West Australian firm), Lorena illustrates books by Australia’s leading fairytale authors such as Kate Forsyth and Sophie Masson, along with her own book of illustrated fairytale quotations, Wiser Than Evening.

Below: detail from another book in a fairytale series at the same publisher, with stories by Kate Forsyth and illustrations by Lorena Carrington:

Happily, Lorena Carrington's book Wiser Than Evening contains lines by two of my favourite writers, Keats and Wilde, whose words have abided with me since childhood. Wonderful to have them mingling here with the great classic baroque female fairy tale spinners, the conteuses, hailing from French fairy tale salons, as well as the Pre-Raphaelites (such as Christina Georgina Rossetti) who came later.

A striking image of an archer (couldn’t resist that pun) depicts a passage from ‘The Bee and the Orange Tree’ by Marie-Catherine Le Jumel de Barneville, Baroness d'Aulnoy, a French Countess known. Calling her works ‘contes de fées’, d’Aulnoy coined the term of the genre: fairy tales.

Toutebelle, a character from ‘The Yellow Dwarf’, is another treasure by Marie-Catherine D’Aulnoy quoted in this book:
‘I am so happy,’ replied Toutebelle. ‘Pray, permit me, Madam, to enjoy my peaceful indifference.’
This wit encapsulates, for me, the tone of classic fairy tales: a wry wink, a touch of gaiety, a scope of distance, a flatness of form, a casual grace, a potential for extremity free of intensity, and a subtle, elegant subversion of social norms.

Lorena’s illustrations originated in photography, each snapshot a fragment of the final image, overlaid into an assemblage of juxtapositions, as tales are built from impressions and words.

One query: Why is poetry termed as a separate entity from literature, in the title’s subheading and Foreword? Back in the 80’s at university, we studied poems as ‘literature’ alongside novels, plays and short stories. Likewise, fairy tales (or at least ballads inspired by them) turned up in literary discourse, too. Has this grouping changed? This is not a quibble; I’m genuinely curious. I have no idea whether the rift between oral and literary claimants for fairy tales has reached any consensus yet. It just feels that, like poetry, they are no less literary for being aural and visual too. Lorena does touch on this sensory cohabitation in her Foreword.

All up, the selection, tone, arrangement, artistry and eloquence of Lorena’s collection, indeed its very premise, resonates with me with deepening appreciation, every time I open it.

The book’s title alludes to Kate Forsyth’s quotation that concludes the collection. No spoilers here… read and discover! And enjoy the quest.

This jewel of a book had really better grace the shelves of every library and bookshop worth its pink mallee salt, swifter than a magpie’s swoop.

Order here

Fairy Moss Castle by Lorena Carrington

Hot Air Balloon by Lorena Carrington
(Psst: her dandelion is made of spiderweb & steam!)

Lorena Carrington is a photographic artist and illustrator. Her book Vasilisa the Wise and Other Tales of Brave Young Women with fairy tales retold by Kate Forsyth, was published by Serenity Press in 2017. The follow-up, The Buried Moon and Other Tales of Bright Young Women arrived 2019. A third, Snow White, Rose Red and Other Tales of Kind Young Women, has now arrived and she has more coming out with Serenity Press (for this series and other fairytale projects) over the next two years.

In tandem, I recommend the three audio book productions of this aforementioned series so far, with separate mp3 files, one for each book, featuring Kate Forsyth reading her own writing (re-spun fairy tales) with the ethereal, bewitching music of faerie bard Reilly McCarron, who sings and plays several instruments, especially harp. [More about Reilly's music earlier in this post.] Available at Serenity Press, here

My nomination of Lorena for Australia's national Fairy Tale Award included this appraisal:


Lorena's reputation has sprung, I suggest, from her unique way of engendering new life from decay - moss, twigs, bones, insect wings, shells, bark, fallen leaves and other detritus, mingled with spider webs, steam, mist and coiling ferns - stemming from a combined love of nature, photography and fairy tales. Her illustrations are created from many photographs montaged together (up to 100 in each image), to create works that are rich with light and edged with darkness. Just as a sculptor may find life within stone, Lorena is one of those fairies among us who recognises a face in a wood knot. Her true achievement, therefore, transcends professional accolades; it speaks to an eco-spiritual aspect of fairy tales that many of us hold dear: an ability to approach life and death with childlike wonder, and to let the world enchant us.

Quick links to the ethereal artists, musicians and writers featured in this post:

Kristoffer Hughes' web page at his publisher's site, Llewellyn
Kristoffer's page at the Celtic Myth Podshow

Adrienne Piggott of mythic-rock band Spiral Dance

Eugen Bacon's Website

Kate Forsyth's Website

Lorena Carrington's Website    
Lorena's monthly email Newsletter

Reilly McCarron's Website

Priscilla Hernandez's Website
Priscilla's You-Tube Channel - in closing, I particularly recommend her Forest Meditation.