A Whistling of Birds press release

A striking new work of poetry with illustrations by Scottish artist Douglas Robertson, A Whistling of Birds is in dynamic conversation with nature writers and artists through the ages – including D.H. Lawrence, whose iconic collection Birds, Beasts and Flowers was published 100 years ago this autumn.

A Whistling of Birds is published on 22 June 2023

A Whistling of Birds is the fifth collection by acclaimed poet Isobel Dixon

Isobel Dixon’s A Whistling of Birds pays close and memorable attention to our threatened natural world, with echoes and glimpses from other nature-honouring writers and artists such as Elizabeth Bishop, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Ted Hughes.

Dixon says: ‘A conversation more than a decade ago with Scottish artist Douglas Robertson and a mutual love of D.H. Lawrence’s 1923 collection Birds, Beasts and Flowers led us to an absorbing long-running collaboration.’ They will stage a performance and exhibition with further artwork later this year. 

The collection’s title echoes Lawrence’s World War I essay ‘Whistling of Birds’ and there are poems that speak directly to aspects of Lawrence’s life and nature writing, but Dixon’s gaze ranges more widely across continents, centuries and creators. Always with a keen eye for the natural world, her poems here also touch on the work of South African-born, London-based Expressionist painter Albert Adams, along with WWI poet Isaac Rosenberg and contemporary Kurdish poet and political prisoner in Turkey, İlhan Sami Çomak, among others.

At once precise and playful, the collection hums with energy: Syrian roses, an abundance of apricots in Santa Fe; 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, also in times of war, oppression and displacement.

 From ‘Larch Fog’, the opening poem in A Whistling of Birds:

each ink-stroke makes them, now,

anew, again, when they and we are gone –

catkin, stitchwort, celandine,

haystack, lime tree, violet,

the cyclamens, the burning sun.

Praise for A Whistling of Birds:

‘As D.H. Lawrence says, “The essential quality of poetry is that it makes a new effort of attention.” Isobel Dixon’s A Whistling of Birds does just that. Doing so, she gets, and shares with her readers, new slants on life on earth. I felt alerted again to things, fellow creatures, deeds, I hadn’t paid due attention to, or had once and had become accustomed and needed to be shown afresh. This book gives shocks of pleasure and gratitude in equal measure.’ – David Constantine

‘Isobel Dixon’s writing is lit by a fierce sense of landscape. She is newly touched by the tiniest northern flowers, haunted still by powerful spirits of the south. Her work is visually exuberant; its sounds, delicious, especially when bound by rhyme. Dixon’s lines flash with humour and tenderness. Her poems marry exactitude to emotion. In both, they are memorable.’ – Alison Brackenbury

‘These are warm, attentive, moving poems, full of feeling but also full of precision and clarity of mind. Isobel Dixon's work is engaged not just with life, but with poetry as life, and this haunting book is a testament to the doubleness of the poetic art: an engagement with the world, and a world in and of itself.' – Patrick McGuinness

Isobel Dixon grew up in South Africa, where her debut, Weather Eye, won the prestigious Olive Schreiner Prize. She studied in Edinburgh and lives in Cambridge, though family and her work as a literary agent take her back to South Africa each year. Her further collections are A Fold in The Map, Bearings and The Tempest Prognosticator, which J.M. Coetzee described as ‘a virtuoso collection’. Clive James wrote of A Fold in the Map that ‘Isobel Dixon was born with the gift of lyricism as natural speech.’ A Whistling of Birds contains 12 illustrations by Scottish nature artist Douglas Robertson, well known for his collaborations with poets. A South African edition of A Whistling of Birds will be published in September 2023 by Human & Rousseau, publisher of acclaimed South African poets Antjie Krog and Breyten Breytenbach, among others.

Douglas Robertson is an acclaimed Scottish artist, well known for his collaborations with poets. Originally from the East Coast of Scotland, he has lived in Hambledon in the south of England for almost twenty years. His main collaborators over the last decade have been Isobel Dixon and Donald S. Murray. Their collaborations The Guga Stone and Herring Tales were included in the Guardian’s Best Nature Books of 2013 and 2015. In 2020 his assemblage piece, ‘Emigrants – Wake’, won second prize at the Southampton City Art Gallery Biennial Open Exhibition, ‘In Search of a New World’.
http://www.douglasrobertson.co.uk/

Notes for Editors

Isobel Dixon is happy to consider feature commissions and is available for interviews, festivals, workshops, radio, TV and other media opportunities:

Please contact Jane Commane on 07869 144185 or mail@ninearchespress.com

Nine Arches Press was founded in 2008 and emerged from an awareness of the national literary landscape and a desire to provide a platform for new and emerging poets. Our titles have been widely acclaimed and shortlisted for national prizes including the Michael Marks Poetry Pamphlet prize, the Forward Prizes, TS Eliot Poetry Prize, the Ted Hughes Award, the Michael Murphy Prize, the Jhalak Prize, and the Polari Prize. Nine Arches has published over 125 poetry publications, and 30 issues of Under the Radar magazine, and provides a year-round programme of workshops, events, as well as priding themselves as being a publisher that uniquely provides writer development and mentoring. Nine Arches Press is an Arts Council England National Portfolio Organisation, and its Director / Editor is Jane Commane. www.ninearchespress.com

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Isobel Dixon grew up in South Africa, where her debut, Weather Eye, won the prestigious Olive Schreiner Prize. She studied in Edinburgh and now lives in Cambridge, returning annually to her family home in the Great Karoo. Her further collections are A Fold in the Map, Bearings and The Tempest Prognosticator, which J.M. Coetzee described as ‘a virtuoso collection’. Mariscat published her pamphlet The Leonids, and Nine Arches publish A Whistling of Birds in June 2023.  She co-wrote and performed in the Titanic centenary show The Debris Field (with Simon Barraclough and Chris McCabe) and has worked with composers, filmmakers and artists. Her work is recorded for the Poetry Archive and widely published in anthologies and journals including Paris Review, The Hudson Review, Harvard Review, Poetry London, Magma, The Scotsman and New Statesman. She has appeared at international festivals, written numerous feature articles and presented a paper on D.H. Lawrence’s poetry at the International D.H. Lawrence Conference in Paris Nanterre in 2023. www.isobeldixon.com

Twitter: @isobeldixon | Instagram: @isobelmdixon