A Fold in the Map: (Salt Modern Poets)

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. In the first part of the collection, Plenty – “before the fold” – the poems deal with family, and longing for home from a new country, with all the ambiguity and doubleness this perspective entails. In the book’s second half, Meet My Father, the poems recount events more life-changing than merely moving abroad – a father’s illness and death, the loss of some of the plenty of the earlier poems. “A fold in the map” is a nod to Jan Morris’s Trieste And The Meaning Of Nowhere, where the traveller’s state of in-between-ness is explored. Robert Frost said “a poem begins as a lump in the throat, a home-sickness, a love-sickness” and in these poems of love and longing for home, family, and other loved ones, Isobel Dixon draws on a rich store of natural imagery, illuminating the ordinary at times with a touch of wry humour. Her vivid poems will speak memorably to travellers, lovers and all those who mourn. Praise for Weather Eye: `Isobel Dixon portrays people and places, and a sense of displacement, in sensuous yet meticulous detail. In these poems she celebrates creatures and landscapes in contrasting climates and cultures, her sharp perceptions invested with yearning and humour – and an aura of wonder.’ – Stewart Conn `Poems that bring a sensual physicality together with lively, startling imagery.’ – Mail and Guardian, South Africa. `...a contemporary, accessible lyricism. ... characterised by sensuous natural imagery ... Dixon’s gift is in the presentation of such a palpable, earthy presence and its accordant pathos of memory or displacement.’ – James Tink, PN Review

Table of Contents:
PLENTY Plenty Weather Eye Christmas Beetles Crossing Amanzi A View of Empire from a Train The Skinning Shaken from Her Sleep Foreshadow Certus Incertus Gemini Positano (I Want) Something to Show for It The Root of It Kudu Watch Strike Softly Away from the Body Back in the Benighted Kingdom She Comes Swimming The Growing Gift MEET MY FATHER Meet My Father Father Long Distance Tear In the Wind Listening to the Birds My Father’s Pain Lamb Struggle Singsong Today’s Lesson Withdrawal Watch Survivor Drip Cheynes-Stokes And Afternoon One of the First Times After The Paths of the Heavenly Bodies are Ordained Old Child After Grief The Buried Butterfly Again, or Dreams of My Father, Always Silent Now Night Skirmishes `And the Hyacinth’s in Bloom – A Lovely Blue’

About the Author :
Isobel Dixon has been described by Clive James as being `born with the gift of lyricism as natural speech’ and by J M Coetzee as `a poet confident in her mastery of her medium.’ Her poems have appeared in publications like The Paris Review, The Guardian, Penguin’s Poems for Love and The Forward Book of Poetry. Salt published A Fold in the Map in 2007. www.isobeldixon.com

Review :
More understated but no less powerful than both of these collections [Sophie Hannah Pessimism for Beginners, Frances Leviston Public Dream] is Isobel Dixon's A Fold in the Map (Salt, GBP12.99), which includes a poignant retelling of her father's illness and decline. Dixon's own graceful style provides soothing contrast to the bewilderment and indignity her father suffers. -- Natalie Whittle FT Weekend Magazine Isobel Dixon is fully in command of the poetic tools at her disposal. In her hands form and content intertwine naturally, never allowing the reader's attention to wane. Intelligent and sensuous, Dixon's poetry has the wonderful quality of being able to hold the essence of a variety of moods, places and people, which many readers, whether poetry lovers or not, will find engrossing. -- Karina Magdalena Szczrek Sunday Independent (South Africa)