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The Language of Birds : : Dawn to Dusk

by Richard Mabb & David Rogers

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1.
Dawn Chorus 2022 09:48
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2.
Dawn Chorus 2022 05:39
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3.
Dawn Chorus 2022 01:27
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4.
Dawn Chorus 2022 05:30
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5.
Dawn Chorus 2022 01:00
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6.
Dawn Chorus 2022 01:45
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7.
Dawn Chorus 2022 03:53
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8.
Dawn Chorus 2022 01:17
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9.
Dusk Chorus 2022 08:49
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about

Richard's choice of bird poems : : what's behind his selection
[see individual track info for titles and authors]

The first criterion is that the poem must be good to read aloud - to have drama, to be declaimable. To have been written for an audience. To be better off the page than on it.

The second is that the poems are - mostly - from an era of abundant wild-life when there were still cranes and cuckoos in our country and when nightingales charmed the cockney poet or the late-walking-home ploughman, when falcons were seen sky-diving and thrushes were common. When indeed there were two types of lark - wood and sky - everywhere.

For us these poems are read with joy but with sadness. What the poets saw and heard we can now only imagine. They've gone from the Spring-set epithalamions of Chaucer and Clare to elegies for the planet in just a few generations.

Each has been chosen because it includes a heart-stopping moment. Whether it's the free-fall of Hopkin's sprung-rythym falcon to the embers of the Phoenix-fire, Tennyson's unexpected so doubly joyous little carol at the end of Winter, Keats' return with a bump from Faery to Hampstead Heath, Thomas' sudden inspiration that all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire are calling together or Sassoon's epiphany that behind the horror is an endless universal song, each poem should challenge the listener to release their emotions - that their heart, as Hopkins says in Windhover, should stir for a bird.

And lastly they almost all link the image of the bird with the experience of love - in all its forms. Their message is love; love for each other, love for the birds and all our fellow creatures and love for our planet. And they warn us that love, unloved, can fade like Matthew Arnold's bright girdle around the earth that has become a dismal, retreating tide. 'I am thyself,' as DG Rosetti writes, 'what hast thou done with me?'.

credits

released October 11, 2022

Richard Mabb : : readings
more spoken voice downloads by Richard Mabb
metamedia.bandcamp.com/track/dystopian-beatbox-remix
metamedia.bandcamp.com/album/b-side-myself

David Rogers : : field recordings

cover drawing by Rosie Britton
www.rosiebritton.com

download production and design David Rogers
davidrogersstudio.co.uk
for electricbackroom STUDIO - Dorset UK

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DIVAcontemporary Bridport, UK

DIVAcontemporary is the Bandcamp Label of electricbackroom STUDIO, an artist-led organisation committed to creativity and experimentation in the arts and practice-based research, working internationally, nationally and locally.

The Dorset based studio provides workspace for creative businesses and develops projects that engage with place through audio, visual, and performance media. ... more

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