Nine Arches Press
Adventures in poetry
The Tempest Prognosticator
Isobel Dixon
Price £9.99
ISBN: 9781911027157
eISBN: 9781913437855
Date: 26 July 2018
Format: Paperback
Extent: 72 pp
POETRY
BIC Code: DCF
We are delighted to re-issue Isobel Dixon's The Tempest Prognosticator, first published in 2011.
In The Tempest Prognosticator leeches warn of storms, whales blunder up the Thames, toktokkie beetles tap out courtship rituals, and women fall for deft cocktail makers and melancholy apes. With her keen eye and a gift for capturing the natural world, Isobel Dixon entices the reader on a journey where the familiar is not always as it seems, where the sideways glance, the double take, yields rich rewards. From Crusoe to Psycho, Pink Floyd to Fred Astaire, the human zoo’s at play here too, in a collection filled with ‘miracle and wonder’, wit and bite.
Praise for The Tempest Prognosticator:
‘In this virtuoso collection, the work of a poet confident in her mastery of her medium, Isobel Dixon moves easily from dialogues with the animal world to mordant ventriloquizings of the female self.’ – J. M. Coetzee
‘Exquisitely written, Isobel Dixon’s poems teach us how to read the world anew.’ – Gabeba Baderoon
‘Frogs, birds, bats, baboons, monkeys, peacocks, lizards and boars leap, crawl, shimmer and swoop through Isobel Dixon’s lusciously feral and finely crafted poems – a wake-up call to the imagination and the senses.’ – Catherine Smith
‘Salty and compelling, The Tempest Prognosticator is a richly peopled world. … Isobel Dixon’s is an imagination on the run.’ – David Wheatley, Poetry London
‘Isobel Dixon is an extraordinary talent. … The entirety of this planet – from its animal life to politics, past to present – is found in close-up in her verse.’ – Donald S. Murray, Magma
‘Poetry of exquisite vigour, panache and a resourceful, ranging intelligence. Life-affirming, funny, almost liquid in the movement of language, like the title poem, The Tempest Prognosticator is an ‘ingenious carousel’ of a book.’ – David Morley
Isobel Dixon grew up in South Africa, where her debut, Weather Eye, won the Olive Schreiner Prize. She studied in Edinburgh and now lives in Cambridge, returning frequently to her family home in the Great Karoo. Her further collections are A Fold in the Map, Bearings and The Tempest Prognosticator, which J.M. Coetzee described as ‘a virtuoso collection’. Mariscat published her pamphlet The Leonids, and Nine Arches publish A Whistling of Birds in June 2023. She co-wrote and performed in the Titanic centenary show The Debris Field (with Simon Barraclough and Chris McCabe) and has worked with composers, filmmakers and artists. Her work is recorded for the Poetry Archive. www.isobeldixon.com
You may also like...
Also by Isobel Dixon, A Fold in the Map charts two very different voyages: a tracing of the dislocations of leaving one’s native country, and a searching exploration of grief at a father’s final painful journey.
The Nine Arches Press blog features poems from many of our poets, as well as interviews and articles.
