'the birds' is a poem of extracted text from Christie Lefteri's novel 'Songbirds'.
The story centres on two people who are connected by the fragility of life. It's a beautiful story of love and hope, and partly focusses on the illegal trapping, killing and trade of songbirds. It was the sadness and thought provoking descriptions of trapping birds that inspired me to write the poem.
The postcard began with a black and white tinted photograph looking up into a winter tree canopy. This, and the poem was inkjet printed onto 270gsm paper. I then used India ink, pen and gold leaf to create the feathers.
The choice of gold leaf is a metaphor for the beauty of songbirds both in appearance and song, with the darkening feathers representing their fate in the mist nets. The bare, faded grey branches allude to the birds' loss of freedom and life and suggest a sense of entrapment.
'the birds' is an edition of nine, with the first postcard belonging to the 'In Praise of Birds' World Book Night 2024 Postcard Project.
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