Isobel Dixon and the Poetic Menagerie in The Tempest Prognosticator (Plus Excerpt)

Matt Merritt interviewed Isobel Dixon about her new collection of poems, The Tempest Prognosticator, which has been called “a virtuoso collection” by JM Coetzee. Dixon discusses her preference for weather, animals and the quirks of human invention, as well as some of the writing that inspired her work. She names Damien Hirst’s Requiem, Eugene Marais’s The Soul of the Ape and The Soul of the White Ant, Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa and Robert Byron’s The Road to Oxiana as influences.

Read the interview, which comes with three poems extracted from the book: “Upupa Epops”, “Only Adapt” and “Paradox”.

One of the things I enjoyed most about this collection was the vividly African flavour of many of the poems, both in subject matter and in the language used. How often do you get back to South Africa, and do you find that an essential spark to your creativity?

I’m glad you can feel Africa in it, even though there’s a wider ranger of themes and settings than in the more overtly homesick and family-focused A Fold in the Map. There’s a lot more London, Yorkshire, England in The Tempest Prognosticator, partly reflecting how long I’ve lived and worked on this island. But South Africa remains essential to my life and writing. I go back twice a year, for publishing work and to see family and friends, and just to be at home in the Karoo for a while. My mother still lives in the house where I and my sisters grew up, and this old house and my home town Graaff-Reinet remain crucial places for me. I was thinking of it as I wrote as a harbour or dry dock and the phrase ‘refreshment station’ keeps popping into my mind – what the Dutch East India Company called the settlement at the Cape, a place for sailors to pick up fresh water and fruit and vegetables on their long sea journeys. A way to prevent emotional scurvy, perhaps…!

Paradox

There’s no telling what
will make the heart leap, frog-
like, landing with a soggy plop.
Love startles, makes a mockery
of us, and yet we lie awake
at night and croak and croak for it.