klward

My essay, "The Danse Macabre", in The Macabre Modern and Other Morbidities has won the Rocky Wood Award for Non-Fiction and Criticism in the 2019 Australian Shadows. That's another demon on the shelf! Thanks are due, once again, to my editor Danny.

"What exactly is a danse macabre?
The word macabre makes its first known appearance in the fourteenth century poem, “Respit de la Mort” (Respite From Death) by the French poet Jean Le Fevre. The line reads, “Je fis de macabre la danse” (roughly, “I did the macabre dance”). The context suggests that this qualifies the poet to pronounce on the ubiquity of death, the fate that ultimately awaits all who are born. Some commentators think Le Fevre must have narrowly escaped dying through accident or disease, and distilled the experience into this work. But why did he describe it as dance?..."