ABSTRACT
This chapter considers two Australian texts in which animal voices are heard, with disturbing clarity, during apocalyptic world events: The Animals in That Country (2020), a prize-winning novel by Laura Jean McKay, and The Ghost of the Cock (1964), a radio play in verse by the poet Francis Webb. The texts, informed in turn by animal studies and Franciscan spirituality, are read as poetic soundscapes and apocalyptic beast fables. The animals in these texts resist allegorical interpretations and instead express both radical differences from, and uncomfortable kinships with, humanity. The chapter argues that by articulating animal voices in the apocalypse, the texts offer visions of disconnection and destruction that none-the-less contain the seed of hope that by listening carefully to other species we may still preserve a shared future.
