I first discovered the existence of this book on fellow Tuesday Poet, Kathleen Jones’s blog, on 12 September. I was so fascinated by the featured poem, the eponymous The Tempest Prognosticator, that I decided to act on that fascination then and there and buy the book—which I promptly did, from UK publisher Salt. I am usually considerably more reticent about buying poetry on spec, as it were—and so correspondingly excited to now have the book right here on my desk (with a very nice note enclosed from the folk at Salt, I may add.)

OK, onto the book. As with all “Just Arrived”s I’m interested to know what the back cover has to say:

“In The Tempest Prognosticator leeches warn of storms, whales blunder up the Thames, beetles tap out their courtship rituals, and women fall for deft cocktail makers and melancholy apes. With her keen eye and a gift for vividly capturing the natural world, Isobel Dixon entices the reader on a journey where the familiar is not always as it seems at first, 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.”

Which certainly sounds more than a little interesting … Especially when taken together with cover praise from writers such as JM Coetzee:

‘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.’

Intriguing even. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to reading for myself.