A Whistling of Birds, NB Publishers, 2023
Lyrical, vigorous, invent Lyrical, vigorous, inventive, Isobel Dixon’s fifth poetry collection, A Whistling of Birds, gestures towards D.H. Lawrence’s iconic Birds, Beasts and Flowers, but in a voice distinctly the poet’s own. Dixon’s gaze takes in Syrian roses, an abundance of apricots in Santa Fe, the memory of a dancing friend; bats, bees, tortoises, snakes, the generous body of a whale. Threaded throughout is the beautiful complexity and vulnerability of the planet, and the joy and difficulty of making art, as each poem becomes its own vivid testament to the natural world, and our often troubled and troubling place in it.
Exuberant, unguarded,
twilight treetop robin sings
between the streetlight and the moon.
An April Easter, mild this year,
and I am conscious of this blessing –
woman poised between a riven island
and a fractured continent –
the simple peace of walking home.
‘This, Evensong’
I can almost not breathe for being in the presence of these poems.
—Gabeba Baderoon
About the author
Isobel Dixon grew up in the Eastern Cape and studied in Stellenbosch and Edinburgh. She lives in Cambridge, returning frequently to her family in the Great Karoo. Her debut, Weather Eye, won the Olive Schreiner Prize. Further books are A Fold in the Map, Bearings and The Tempest Prognosticator, which JM Coetzee described as ‘a virtuoso collection’.
Publication date: 08 September 2023
Price: R295,00
Category: English poetry
ISBN-13: 9780798184144