My collection A Whistling of Birds contains poems that speak of and to forerunners, ancestors, ghosts; of poets, musicians, artists, writers, family, friends. I feel the presence and inspiration of many beloved teachers, editors and mentors in the flow of my writing over the years, and it’s an awareness of gratitude and connection that seems more alive and electric as time passes.
This weekend, late September turning to October, Michaelmastide, my dear friend and mentor Carole Blake has been much on my mind, as she so often is, especially in my publishing life. I started working with her in late September 28 years ago, in the run-up to my first Frankfurt Book Fair, and we shared countless conversations about books and authors, also beyond the agency, over the 21 years we worked together. One memorable thread was around D.H. Lawrence and I treasure the Penguin paperback collection of Lawrence’s novels, essays and travel writing — Carole’s copies — which her sister Rosie so generously gave to me after her death.
Among the collection is the doorstopper Penguin edition of the Complete Poems (collected and edited with an introduction and notes by Vivian de Sola Pinto and F. Warren Roberts). I love that it is still festooned with orange sticky notes (very on-brand), added by Carole’s hand when she first loaned the volume to me: the markers to point out the poems about his censored paintings, a topic we’d got onto during some late-night post-party conversation. Carole admired Lawrence’s creative vigour and daring and she loved sharing her passions with others — whether that be shoes, jewellery, wine, food, music or books, books, books.
I’d returned the borrowed book to Carole in the months before her sudden death, but in her absence I am happy to have its sturdy presence back, with her colourful markers still in situ, on my study shelf. Though in the middle of a Zoom poetry session for the D.H. Lawrence Society earlier this year, the well-thumbed copy tumbled off my lap — and split cleanly down the middle. Each part still complete in itself though, a newly-cleaved two-volume edition. I smile to think of telling Carole about that.
‘Gentians for Carole’, which references Lawrence’s ‘Bavarian Gentians’, is in Carole’s memory, a Michaelmas poem, thinking of her 29 September birthday. Lawrence too born in September, and both sharing a love of bright colour, seeking intensely-lived life.
This poem first appeared in The Hudson Review, Spring 2020, and is now included in A Whistling of Birds. I post this also with thanks to Paula Deitz, editor of The Hudson Review.
Gentians for Carole
Not every man has gentians in his house
in Soft September, at slow, Sad Michaelmas.
—D. H. Lawrence, Bavarian Gentians
Slow, sad September, soft, and yes, still sad.
Not every house has autumn flowers,
and I have never seen a gentian with my living eyes.
Did you?—like Lawrence, dizzied by the blue
and spinning in his words?
The blue, repeating blues, the smoking dark;
the burning blue of Dis he muses on so long,
his darkened-on-blueness blue.
Reach me a gentian, give me a torch!
Light-seeker, Sun-searcher, sluicing off
the carbon black: south, east, west,
whichever place the compass gifts him heat.
No wonder he reached for gentians then,
roots plumbing shades that echo Pluto-deep
but offering fields of late-year light.
I hear the wind up on high meadows,
rippling through grass, the mountain lungs
wide-studded with a swooning blue.
Blue balm to the eyes
and on the tongue,
the healing bitter of gentian root.
We have been together in those dark halls,
absorbing our Autumn news
in frosted September’s chill.
Each one of us, some time, Persephone,
but grateful for colour, light
and meadow flowers
late into bittersweet Fall.
In Nottingham, barefoot, he’s always holding one.
Your ashes found the soil around Spring crocuses.
Give us such torch-flowers to see us through the days—
the hot-white blur and daze of racing life,
the softly rising mist of violet hours.
i.m. Carole Rae Blake
29 September 1946–25 October 2016
From A Whistling of Birds by Isobel Dixon (UK: Nine Arches, June 2023; South Africa: Human & Rousseau, September 2023). Both editions have a cover image and some illustrations by Scottish nature artist, Douglas Robertson. This poem first appeared in The Hudson Review, Spring 2020, ‘The British Issue’.
Lines from ‘Bavarian Gentians’ by D. H. Lawrence in ‘Gentians for Carole’ are from The Cambridge Edition of the Works of D. H. Lawrence: The Poems edited by Christopher Pollnitz, © Cambridge University Press 2013. Reproduced by permission of Paper Lion Ltd, The Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli and Cambridge University Press.