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Sparrow Tree
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.
- GenresPoetry
65 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 3, 2011
12 people want to read
About the author
Gwyneth Lewis
40 books30 followersGwyneth Lewis was Wales' National Poet from 2005-06, the first writer to be given the Welsh laureateship. She has published eight books of poetry in Welsh and English. Chaotic Angels (Bloodaxe Books, 2005) brings together the poems from her three English collections, Parables & Faxes, Zero Gravity and Keeping Mum. Her latest book is Sparrow Tree. Gwyneth wrote the six-foot-high words for the front of Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre (which are located just in front of the space-time continuum, as seen on Dr Who and Torchwood.)
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 18, 2023
4 red dragon stars. Gwyneth Lewis was Wales’s National Poet from 2005 to 2006, the first writer to be given the Welsh laureateship. She is also known as the composer of the words on the front of the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff, opened in 2004. The connection with birds here inspired me to pick up this little book. I've read through it at least three times now, and really don't know how to sum it up. I'm no judge of poetry. I feel as if there is much that eludes me here. Lewis is clearly a master of language and structure. The images are sometimes playful, and sometimes quite stark and repelling. Other passages draw me in and speak to me directly. There are birds here, but also strong emotions: Love, loss, grief, and things that can't be put into words perhaps.
The book is divided into four sections titled Syrinx, Logos, Feather, and Cry. The first section has the most to do with birds. I'm an avid birder, so I can resonate to passages like "It's no small thing to have lived your life / In cardinals' and tree-creepers' eyes." The second section ventures off into foreign places with a lengthy "Imaginary Walks in Istanbul." The thirds section contains two previously published works: "Quilting for Childless Women" and "How to Knit a Poem." These both spoke volumes to me being childless and a knitter. Indeed, the first poem cycle opens "First, bury ideas of a baby, / Then cover the hill / In juniper, laurel." I found that a bit startling - since my name is Laurel, it seemed as if I was being addressed quite directly. And here's an intriguing thought: "If space is made of superstrings, / Then God's a knitter, everything / Is craft, and perhaps we could darn / Tears in the space-time continuum." The last section is the hardest to describe. Perhaps it's about finding a voice - there are birds, and music, and grief, and stars, and the ocean. My favorite poem Spectrum begins: "Look to the dark, it's full of company, / Though dust obscure the birth of a star. / Waiting creates a wider way to see."
Description: 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 hummingbirds 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. Winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year).
The book is divided into four sections titled Syrinx, Logos, Feather, and Cry. The first section has the most to do with birds. I'm an avid birder, so I can resonate to passages like "It's no small thing to have lived your life / In cardinals' and tree-creepers' eyes." The second section ventures off into foreign places with a lengthy "Imaginary Walks in Istanbul." The thirds section contains two previously published works: "Quilting for Childless Women" and "How to Knit a Poem." These both spoke volumes to me being childless and a knitter. Indeed, the first poem cycle opens "First, bury ideas of a baby, / Then cover the hill / In juniper, laurel." I found that a bit startling - since my name is Laurel, it seemed as if I was being addressed quite directly. And here's an intriguing thought: "If space is made of superstrings, / Then God's a knitter, everything / Is craft, and perhaps we could darn / Tears in the space-time continuum." The last section is the hardest to describe. Perhaps it's about finding a voice - there are birds, and music, and grief, and stars, and the ocean. My favorite poem Spectrum begins: "Look to the dark, it's full of company, / Though dust obscure the birth of a star. / Waiting creates a wider way to see."
Description: 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 hummingbirds 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. Winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Award (Wales Book of the Year).
January 1, 2013
There were some poems that touched me, but otherwise I wasn't really involved with what she was writing. 1. I'm not into ornithology, so talking about birds doesn't really hold my attention. 2. I didn't understand the points of many of the poems. 3. I didn't get the theme nor the way the book was put together--there were knitting poems too...I suppose you could say birds "knit" a nest and somehow the imagery is all intertwined. I don't know. I just wasn't thrilled, which is what I do know.
July 2, 2013
A wonderful collection of wonderful poems.
October 11, 2016
Was really disappointed with this
April 3, 2017
People been giving this a shitty review because its not 100% bird related is ridiculous. The knitting section will speak to anyone with a mum and/or nan and it ends on a horizon so carefully constructed and hopeful y'all are fuckin fools God damn
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews