Latest news: DARKLING, THE OWL’S SONG

Posted: November 1, 2025

Darkling, The Owl’s Song has been out in the world for one year. Published in October 2024 by Apollo, an inprint of Zephyr/Bloomsbury it is a series of paintings accompanied by a narrative poem.

Darkling is a journey from Dusk to Dawn seen through the eyes of the Tawny Owl.  The Darkling Wood is his kingdom and jealously guarded territory.  As dusk falls and the shadows lengthen he sits and watches and waits.

He calls the darkness:

‘I am the silence before day’s dawning,

the hooting that conjures night.

I am the charm that promises luck,

the portent that takes it away.

I am the spirit that lives in the oak

and I am the darkling at the end of the day.’

 

In The Darkling Wood, the owl is tree, leaf, star, moon, time, past, present, and  hungry

From tree to tree, he flies, hunting and calling along the river where otter hunts and heron waits.  He flies low in fox dark across stubbled fields where hare plays with shadows. Flies up to the lonely copse as the river song rises and the wind lifts, dancing with the moon. Through a gusty squall of sheeting rain down under small oaks where badger trundles, bear like. On to where the does drink from silvered puddles as the mist rises. Dawn’s dew takes the night, filling the woodland hollows. the stars melt away and the trees stir. The wild moon hovers and sinks.

He heralds the dawn.