{"id":205,"date":"2024-04-24T08:06:33","date_gmt":"2024-04-24T08:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gwynethlewis.com\/site\/?page_id=205"},"modified":"2025-04-28T11:17:01","modified_gmt":"2025-04-28T11:17:01","slug":"sparrow-tree","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/gwynethlewis.com\/site\/sparrow-tree\/","title":{"rendered":"Sparrow Tree"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Gwyneth<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Award 2012<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Gwyneth Lewis\u2019s highly inventive Sparrow Tree<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Publisher: Bloodaxe books<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Such exuberant invention\u2026 The range of reference is so wide, we are intoxicated by it\u2026 [An] impressive, restrained collection\u2026. The most lyrical writing is to be found in \u201cBirder\u201d (an elegy for an aunt), packed with metaphor and a rigorous, energetic music that once more addresses \u201cthe end\u201d \u2013 \u201cWhen I die \/ I want to hear birds ricochet\/ Outside my window\u2026 I\u2019d like\/ To deserve this litany:\/ Woodpecker, waxwing, chickadee\u2019.<\/p>\nElaine Feinstein, The Guardian<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Since winning the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize in 1995, Gwyneth Lewis (Wales\u2019s first National Poet) has steadily gained recognition from critics as one of the most gifted writers of her generation\u2026 These poems work especially well if read aloud, when the lovely half-rhymes and alliteration are fully audible\u2026 The impression is of someone deeply involved in the process of making’.<\/p>\nTara Bergin, Poetry Review<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Sparrow Tree<\/em> by Gwyneth Lewis shows a poet at the height of her powers. On one level this is nature poetry, particularly poetry about birds, but nothing is ever quite as it seems with this innovative, brave poet. The flights of imagination encompass a rich flock of metaphors that give these poems real power\u2026 These poems dig deep into the human psyche whilst retaining humour and warmth\u2026 The poems\u2026 are alive with precise language and emotion\u2019.<\/p>\nEnvoi<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018The power of Gwyneth Lewis\u2019s work lies in the exchange of an underlying troubled spirit for a visionary opening on to a world able to accommodate it. Her latest collection is mostly spare and restrained, some of its poems as weightless as birds flitting from branch to branch\u2026The bird poems \u2013 stark, uncompromising, onomatopoeic \u2013 do not constitute nature poetry as we might in one form recognise it: starling clouds notwithstanding, they are neither descriptive nor epiphanous but essentially co-mingling and sub-textual\u2026.This volume finds Lewis holding course on \u201cmighty tides\u201d with the aplomb of a mariner, the keel \u201ccold in the current\u201d, the mast \u201cinscribing water like a restless pen\/ writing a fading wake!\u201d It\u2019s a gull\u2019s-eye view\u2019.<\/p>\nNigel Jarrett, Acumen<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018With their inventive internal rhymes and sprawling register, they both lilt and syncopate. But music is clearly different from song \u2013 the one played, the other voiced \u2013 and it is this distinction from which the poems in Sparrow Tree seem to rise \u2026 These are poems that gather darkly and peck. They feint and play hazardously with their beaks and sometimes take to wing\u2026. These are poems more concerned with the mechanisms of song \u2013 both human and avian \u2013 than they are with the song itself, and it is this resistance that makes the poems so often mesmerizing\u2026 What Lewis pulls off\u2026 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\u2019.<\/p>\nNew Welsh Review<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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‘The subjects she treats in this affecting volume are those of pastoral elegy\u2026 Et in Arcadia ego<\/em>. Yet tone is light and vital\u2026 Cryptic and quipping equivocators, the birds that call through these poems are as enigmatic as they are emblematic. You will not find them in the trees outside your window Lewis\u2019s birds explode in and out of the eye. They invade grammar and meaning with their calls’.<\/p>\nPlanet<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Gwyneth Lewis\u2019s poems put nature writing in a spin\u2019.<\/p>\nDaily Post<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Gwyneth Lewis\u2019 much admired, prize-winning poetry scintillates with wit\u2026 This is in line with Lewis\u2019 forte<\/em> for \u2018serious play\u2019: \u2018play\u2019 because she is resourceful, inventive, teasing; \u2018serious\u2019 because she explores everything fearlessly, from relationships on a knife-edge to religious belief, from writing poems to resisting cancer, from fighting despair and \u2018self-harm\u2019 to talking a splinter in a child\u2019s heel\u2026 She also seems to be experimenting\u2026 This is exciting. Lewis has always been able to go out on a limb. Now she pushes out further\u2019.<\/p>\nArtemis<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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\u2018Gwyneth Lewis is my favourite modern poet\u2026 It is a privilege to have this new slim volume of poems in my hands\u2026 Sparrow Tree<\/em> did not disappoint. I found the poems\u2026 colourful, poignant, funny and thought provoking\u2026 Every poem has characters who come alive with Gwyneth\u2019s gifted use of words\u2026 I recommend this book to all readers who love poetry and to those who don\u2019t \u2013 I would say, just try it \u2013 and see for yourself how beautifully written and accessible Gwyneth Lewis\u2019s poetry is. [Her] previous collection A Hospital Odyssey<\/em> was received well by critics, and this latest collection should be no different. Sparrow Tree<\/em> presents poetry ostensibly about the huge variety of birds native to both the UK and America, but on delving deeper into the natural imagery the reader is presented with the wilds of the human mind as habitat for these birds, and the birds themselves as mouthpieces for human emotion\u2019.<\/p>\nnewbooks magazine<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Gwyneth Lewis on Sparrow Tree<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

When a poem starts to nag my brain, teasing it out in words is a private act of hope against humiliation. Will what I have in mind work, or will it flop? Luckily, I have a Discarded Poems file for failures, entirely botched jobs never reach print. The reason I work beyond all reason at poems is in the hope of reaching someone else\u2019s mind. This is because my life has been so enriched by reading and the glimpses that gives you of other people\u2019s worlds. Some of the poems I sent in a bottle have reached shore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You\u2019d think that writing would get easier as you do more of it. Sparrow Tree<\/em> is my eighth book of poems but knowing more about the craft makes achieving what I want even harder. Simplicity is much more difficult to effect than something that sounds good but means little. The book before this one was A Hospital Odyssey<\/em>, a long narrative poem, so I decided to write short ones for a change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sparrow Tree<\/em> of the title refers to a bush outside our house with a nest in it and what happened to its occupants. Over the years, I\u2019ve spent a lot of time bird watching so a series of bird poems seemed a natural subject for me. Traditionally used as images for poets, my poem-birds are quite tricksy and, by no means all benign. Perhaps they\u2019re symbols of the human mind as much as descriptions of starlings, hummingbirds and the unidentifiable \u2018small brown jobs\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book as a whole is about speaking. There\u2019s a love poem to my husband which concentrates on his inability to pronounce a certain Spanish place name: San Juan de Aznalfarache. There\u2019s also a series called \u2018How to Knit a Poem\u2019, which was written for a series on the craft for BBC Radio 4. I look at the art and science of knitting and construct a Memorial Sweater for myself. Research shows that the small eye movements associated with knitting can help with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and depression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My advice to anybody who wants to write is: do it. This isn\u2019t as easy as it sounds. Trying to write is certainly a good way to get housework done. Read a lot, admire what\u2019s good and never give up\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winner of the Roland Mathias Poetry Award 2012 Gwyneth Lewis\u2019s 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… Read More »Sparrow Tree<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-205","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nSparrow Tree - Gwyneth Lewis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sparrow Tree by Gwyneth Lewis. 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