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.

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.