Lines for Birds: Poems and Paintings

The recipients are very much into art, poetry, and birds. It will give them pleasure for a long time. The transition of the artwork to the poetry was extraordinary.

I loved this book. The extraordinarily beautiful paintings by John Wolseley relate to the poems in surprising and subtle ways. The birds fly out of the pages. Buy this book for the paintings alone....although I liked the poems too. This book will appeal to bird lovers or art lovers or those who like poetry.

Wolseley is an englishman who went on extended European walkabout before ending up in Oz in 1996. He eschews the usual man's eye perspective to bundle together multiple perspectives on nature in the bush - distant flying birds perfectly drawn lie alongside: maps of the movements of birds, lizards, & snakes; hill ranges and river valleys; foregrounded by a huge worm's eye view of lichen, or a collection of seed-pods. Lines for birds obvs focuses on birds and poetry. It was good to be able to get anything in the UK as you can't get hold of the latest display of his paintings/collages/installations accompanied by thought-provoking text about his life and work by Sasha Grishin Thames & Hudson Australia only (2015) - but unless you have a special interest in avian poetry that's really the one to get hold of.

Love this book; it was expensive compared to the price in US though.