Posts Tagged ‘dailyprompt-2014’
mnemonic: listening to birdsong
Each day, I walk the loop of our drive and stop for a moment at our concrete bench. I sit there and settle, listening to the sounds: a jet passing overhead, cars on the roadway, a neighbour using a saw. Then I start to hear the quiet mutter of the breeze, the rustling of leaves overhead, the occasional song of a bird.
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This morning I heard the ‘caw’ of a crow, the ‘yank, yank’ of a nuthatch, the winnowing of a snipe. When we assign a pattern of words to mimic and remember the sound of a bird call, it is known as a ‘mnemonic.’ Various other sounds are remembered that way: the ‘chug, chug’ of a train, the ‘drip, drip’ of a tap. Bird mnemonics known to almost everyone are the ‘chick-a-dee-dee-dee’ of the chickadee, the ‘who cooks for you?’ of the barred owl, and the ‘conk-la-ree’ of the red-winged blackbird.
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My new poetry book ‘mnemonic: soundscape and birdsong’ focusses on sounds in the woodland and along the shore. Most of the poems celebrate the way bird song can be a metaphor for the events in our lives. For example, the tapping of a pileated woodpecker on the wood of a backstop at the baseball diamond sounds like the connect of bat and ball during the game.
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My book ‘mnemonic’ includes my poems and pencil drawings.
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To obtain a copy of ‘mnemonic,’ take a visit to Dog Eared Books in Oromocto, or Westminster Bookmark in Fredericton. You can also order the book from Chapel Street Editions here, or from Amazon Canada here.
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I hope you enjoy my poetry and my sketches. You can find a comprehensive list of bird mnemonics at South Bay Birders Unlimited ‘Mnemonic Bird Songs’ here.
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All my best!
Jane Tims
nichepoetryandprose 