A Whistling of Birds

The "birds, beasts and flowers" of Isobel Dixon's new collection are in conversation with DH Lawrence's essay 'Whistling of Birds', thus lending this publication its name, though each poem here is its own vivid testament to the natural world, and our often troubled and troubling place in it.

Lyrical, vigorous, inventive, the poems share points of creative contact with Lawrence's iconic collection, Birds, Beasts and Flowers, but also ranges widely through the worlds of other writers and makers. Threaded throughout is the beautiful complexity and vulnerability of the planet, and the joy and difficulty of making art.

With its resonant elegies and notes of celebration, this is a collection that flexes, hums and brims with energy, yet draws you surely in to its quiet, reflective heart. Poetry as powerful connection and recapitulation, and, even in landscapes of exile and diminishment, the art of rewilding and replenishing the self.