Birds, Beasts & Flowers/A Whistling of Birds

The writing of my new collection A Whistling of Birds was completed alongside a slow-burning long-term multi-media collaboration with Scottish artist Douglas Robertson, circling around D.H. Lawrence’s 1923 poetry collection, Birds, Beasts and Flowers (or the more exclamatory Birds, Beasts & Flowers! as on Lawrence’s own design for the original hardback).

Below you can see examples of Doug’s earlier work in progress: please click on an image to scroll through the selection.
There are more beautiful images in the finished collection itself (a dozen in the Nine Arches UK edition, and a smaller selection in Human & Rousseau’s South African edition, both published in 2023 (the centenary year for Birds, oBeasts and Flowers). More of Doug’s works will be exhibited in London later in 2024.

D.H. Lawrence’s collection Birds, Beasts and Flowers was first published by Martin Secker Ltd on 9 October 1923, printed by The Riverside Press in Edinburgh. These poems, written between 1920 and 1923, include some of Lawrence's finest reflections on the vivid 'otherness' of the non-human world, but also on humanity’s deep connection with the creatures and wider, sometimes wilder, nature.

Lawrence began the Birds, Beasts and Flowers poems near Florence in September 1920, early on in his ‘savage pilgrimage’ – as he described his journey of voluntary exile and sun-seeking beyond England after the First World War. He continued working on individual poems in Taormina (Sicily), Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Australia before completing the book in February 1923 while living in New Mexico. Many of his most famous and much-anthologised poems like ‘Bats’, Mosquito’ and ‘Snake’ come from this collection. Over the course of this project artist Doug Robertson and poet Isobel Dixon have responded in various ways to Lawrence’s work – and to each other’s – a to-and-fro call which has fed into Isobel’s collection A Whistling of Birds, the title referencing Lawrence’s post-WWI essay ‘Whistling of Birds’.

D.H. Lawrence is one of the 20th Century’s greatest nature writers, yet his nature writing is often overshadowed by other controversies; this new Birds, Beasts & Flowers journey aims to bring fresh focus to Lawrence’s passion and genius as an early eco-writer. A Whistling of Birds also touches on the artistic ecosystem, the awareness that no woman, man or poet is an island, sufficient unto themselves. It’s not just that all poets and artists are magpies, but that inspirations and influences, in person and on the page, are essential to the richness of the life’s work – both the camaraderie and the rivalries too. Lawrence was a great admirer of another brilliant nature writing poet-novelist, Thomas Hardy, an influence that is richly evident in Lawrence’s prose as well. A Whistling of Birds also weaves in echoes from other nature-loving poets and artists, like Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Ted Hughes and Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

Lawrence was himself a passionate painter, so the visual arts form a natural extension of Isobel’s poetry. Doug has illustrated several acclaimed books for poet and novelist Donald S. Murray. Doug completed some exquisite drawings for this 21st-century Birds, Beasts & Flowers project and his further work includes illustrations, sculptures, assemblages, wood carvings, a flicker book and more, like his ingenious ‘snake-landscape’ concertina fold-out drawing for the poem ‘The Pass of the Adders’.

While the collection was still a work-in-progress, Doug and Isobel spoke at a conference in Dundee and ran a Poetry School workshop to share their insights on art, poetry and collaboration. Isobel has taught creative writing workshops with university students and school learners, including several times at schools in Nottingham and at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, using nature and sculpture as inspiration for students’ own work. Her poem ‘Plenty’ from A Fold in the Map is on the International GCSE Syllabus and she has spoken to several school groups via Zoom and in person, some as far afield as Cape Town and Buenos Aires. Some of the work from A Whistling of Birds was exhibited at Churcher’s College in October 2023, along with Isobel reading her poetry and in conversation with Doug about their collaboration and inspirations

A further exhibition is planned for London in autumn 2024, and it’s hoped that other exhibitions and performances will take place around the country, including D.H. Lawrence’s birthplace, Nottingham. There are many locations around the the UK – as well as in Italy, France, Germany, New Mexico and more – with connections to Lawrence, the impulsive and compulsive traveller.

Several of the poems in the collection were published in journals like Anthropocene, Bare Fiction, Confluence, The Dark Horse, The Florentine, Herbarium, as well as ‘Gentians for Carole’ in The Hudson Review, ‘Wreckfish’ and ‘Whalefall’ in Harvard Review, and ‘Whereas at Venice’ in The Island Review.  ‘On First Spotting a Snake’s Head Fritillary’ is included in the Places of Poetry anthology (Oneworld, October 2020, edited by Paul Farley and Andrew McRae).