Lines for Birds: Poems and Paintings

Lines for Birds is an explosion of lush images in art and poetry - a rich collaboration between two distinguished artists: painter John Wolseley and poet Barry Hill, both long captivated by nature's union of beauty and savagery. Wolseley and Hill follow the flight paths and the habitats of birds, from the Victorian Mallee to the forests of southeast Asia, to Japan, and to the south of France. From these distant and different places, birds were always there as part of the Earth's dynamic systems, the larger energies expressed within the winged forms. "Sometimes," as the painter says, "it's almost as if I am looking at the Earth with a bird's eye view - the birds suggest new ways of telling stories about the Earth." This is a dazzling book, a conversation between two venerable artists in love with birds. In a world of endangered nature, they celebrate joy. They write: "When a bird arrives in our midst, its presence signifies at least one clear thing: that it is not too late, not yet."