"Magpies chattered in the field maple when I went to the deer, the half of him that lay in a corner between the crops and the orchard. I must be stung by nettles and snared by briar to get to him, but I did not carry him beyond his bounds, only in rays a short distance from the shelter of the branches. In the autumn morning, when I had exhausted magic and seasonal instruction, and held the torso close, my chest bursting, I dreamt I was climbing a wooded hill. It was scarred by deep fissures that criss-crossed in lines and rings to the summit. Each time I progressed to a new cutting, a herd of deer would crowd behind me, obstructing my means of return. They ran the lower fosse, nervous but expectant, swelling in number. I came out into a high clearing between two combatant white stags that were each laying claim to the harvest. Sun and moon, they were hostile and wished me harm but the deer in the west appeared to be suffering a blight. I pushed back at him and his hair fell away in clumps and ashes. His skin had been too long hidden from the light, and it was pale as the tissue of the buzzard’s body.
Half-waking, I clutched at the husk of the earth, weightless and parched, compeer to a travelling wind. I would run with him, but my hands and feet, distending slowly into hooves, gnawed in pain. I could not breathe so well and was frightened, my lips and tongue turning to wet, green muzzle. Into the hollow of the deer’s ribcage, the magpie god was trailing feathers in slow circles. The bird was on fire and a warning, like the greening to red of winter whitethorn. Chak-chak-chak, he rasped and rattled his death spell of elderflower and fog, in his claws the shining remains."
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Jim Carter is an English sculptor, writer and land artist. Organic and visceral, poetic and other, his work is linked to death and rebirth: making sculpture from natural materials as a means of celebration or commemoration for animal life; shifting to sound, film and image to enter emotional spaces of land, magic and dream. All his work, though informed by a powerful sense of fragility and futility in a time of climate anxiety, is upheld by a conviction in an irrepressible spirit for regeneration in the world: an imperishable flame that rises most clearly in the landscape and the magic of animals.
Jim holds an MA with distinction in Art and Environment from Falmouth University and an Msc award in Ecopsychology from the Centre for Human Ecology, Edinburgh. His work has been exhibited at Anima Mundi Gallery and published in Dark Mountain, Earthlines, About Place Journal and Unpsychology magazine.