Sparrow Tree

Cover; Description; Title Page; Dedication; Acknowledgements; Contents; SYRINX; Sparrow Tree; Taxonomy; Field Guide to Dementia; Guest; What Do Birds Say?; Murmuration; Birder; Virgin; LOGOS; Small Brown Job; Love Poem; Splinter; Imaginary Walks in Istanbul; FEATHER; Quilting for Childless Women; 1 Pine Trees (Crib Quilt); 2 Broken Plates; 3 Tumbling Blocks; 4 Crazy Quilt; 5 Broken Star; 6 Triangles; 7 Double Wedding Ring (for H.W.); 8 Log Cabin, Barn Raising Variation (Crib Quilt); 9 Ocean Waves (for A.J.); 10 Bricks in Bars; 11 Crosses and Losses.;?Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) Gwyneth Lewis's highly inventive Sparrow Tree puts nature writing in a spin, presenting a huge variety of birds, both British and American: blue tits, blackbirds, egrets, juncos, starlings, herons and humming-birds as well as the sparrows of the title. The book explores birds as mouthpieces for inhuman song and the wild inside the mind. Launching flights of avian fancy or fantasy on several levels, Sparrow Tree moves from birdsong as proto-language to birds as decorative beings. The collection includes her already well-known How to Knit a P. Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year) Gwyneth Lewis's highly inventive Sparrow Tree puts nature writing in a spin, presenting a huge variety of birds, both British and American: blue tits, blackbirds, egrets, juncos, starlings, herons and humming-birds as well as the sparrows of the title. The book explores birds as mouthpieces for inhuman song and the wild inside the mind. Launching flights of avian fancy or fantasy on several levels, Sparrow Tree moves from birdsong as proto-language to birds as decorative beings. The collection includes her already well-known How to Knit a Poem, commissioned by BBC Radio 4, and ends with images of the human word as a form of love. 'These are poems that gather darkly and peck. They feint and play hazardously with their beaks and sometimes take to wing' These are poems more concerned with the mechanisms of song - both human and avian - than they are with the song itself, and it is this resistance that makes the poems so often mesmerising' What Lewis pulls off'feels like an avian feat: she strikes a fine, improbable balance between gravity and levity. Even as her speaker struggles to access the language, to get the voice right, she gets us off the ground and ungiddily bids us, look' - Elyse Fenton, New Welsh Review. Cover Description Title Page Dedication Acknowledgements Contents SYRINX Sparrow Tree Taxonomy Field Guide to Dementia Guest What Do Birds Say? Murmuration Birder Virgin LOGOS Small Brown Job Love Poem Splinter Imaginary Walks in Istanbul FEATHER Quilting for Childless Women 1 Pine Trees (Crib Quilt) 2 Broken Plates 3 Tumbling Blocks 4 Crazy Quilt 5 Broken Star 6 Triangles 7 Double Wedding Ring (for H.W.) 8 Log Cabin, Barn Raising Variation (Crib Quilt) 9 Ocean Waves (for A.J.) 10 Bricks in Bars 11 Crosses and Losses. 12 Thirty-six Patch Variation (Crib Quilt)How to Knit a Poem 1 Hobby 2 Aran 3 Late Starter 4 Tension Square 5 Heroine 6 The Symbolism of Ancient Sweaters 7 Fractals 8 Hypnosis Knitting 9 Memorial Sweater CRY Voice 'As Long as you Want' Spectrum Remission Sevillanas Prayer for Horizon Sea Virus About the Author Copyright.