John Bevis, A-Z of Bird Song, Coracle Press, 1996
Title: A-Z of Bird Song
Author: John Bevis
Publisher: Coracle Press
Publication date: 1996
Format: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good:
Collections: Yale Centre for British Art
John Bevis’, An A-Z of Bird Song was published by Coracle and St Paulinus in 1995. It is the first in a trilogy focusing on the vocabulary birds. The unique aspect of this publication lies in its use of onomatopoeic phrases found in birdwatching guides to identify various bird sounds. Examples include "meeoo peeoo" for the Buzzard and "tswee" for the Greenfinch. These phrases are not standard dictionary entries and thus carry an unorthodox, temporary status, similar to colloquial language in the natural world. The author collected these phrases from multiple sources, inscribing them on file cards, one for each bird species in Britain. The process involved underlining phrases with any agreement across sources, choosing between different spellings for identical sounds, and discarding phrases that were not suggested by more than one source. The finale involved arranging these phrases alphabetically, not by species but by sound, which theoretically enables identification of a bird by its call.
John Bevis is an English freelance writer specialising in nature and the arts, poetry and criticism. His writing career goes hand-in-hand with working in editing, printing and publishing. Books include Printed in Norfolk (RGAP, 2012), a history of the gallery and artists’ publisher Coracle Press, and Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: The Words of Birds (MIT Press, 2010) a study of the various ways we attempt to capture, preserve and imitate the songs of birds, with a lexicon of "bird words". His work is discussed by Ross Hair in Avant-Folk: Small Press Poetry Networks from 1950 to the Present (Liverpool UP, 2016). His book The Keartons: Inventing Nature Photography, was published in 2016 by Uniformbooks. For more information and contact, go to www.johnbevis.com.
Title: A-Z of Bird Song
Author: John Bevis
Publisher: Coracle Press
Publication date: 1996
Format: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good:
Collections: Yale Centre for British Art
John Bevis’, An A-Z of Bird Song was published by Coracle and St Paulinus in 1995. It is the first in a trilogy focusing on the vocabulary birds. The unique aspect of this publication lies in its use of onomatopoeic phrases found in birdwatching guides to identify various bird sounds. Examples include "meeoo peeoo" for the Buzzard and "tswee" for the Greenfinch. These phrases are not standard dictionary entries and thus carry an unorthodox, temporary status, similar to colloquial language in the natural world. The author collected these phrases from multiple sources, inscribing them on file cards, one for each bird species in Britain. The process involved underlining phrases with any agreement across sources, choosing between different spellings for identical sounds, and discarding phrases that were not suggested by more than one source. The finale involved arranging these phrases alphabetically, not by species but by sound, which theoretically enables identification of a bird by its call.
John Bevis is an English freelance writer specialising in nature and the arts, poetry and criticism. His writing career goes hand-in-hand with working in editing, printing and publishing. Books include Printed in Norfolk (RGAP, 2012), a history of the gallery and artists’ publisher Coracle Press, and Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: The Words of Birds (MIT Press, 2010) a study of the various ways we attempt to capture, preserve and imitate the songs of birds, with a lexicon of "bird words". His work is discussed by Ross Hair in Avant-Folk: Small Press Poetry Networks from 1950 to the Present (Liverpool UP, 2016). His book The Keartons: Inventing Nature Photography, was published in 2016 by Uniformbooks. For more information and contact, go to www.johnbevis.com.
Title: A-Z of Bird Song
Author: John Bevis
Publisher: Coracle Press
Publication date: 1996
Format: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good:
Collections: Yale Centre for British Art
John Bevis’, An A-Z of Bird Song was published by Coracle and St Paulinus in 1995. It is the first in a trilogy focusing on the vocabulary birds. The unique aspect of this publication lies in its use of onomatopoeic phrases found in birdwatching guides to identify various bird sounds. Examples include "meeoo peeoo" for the Buzzard and "tswee" for the Greenfinch. These phrases are not standard dictionary entries and thus carry an unorthodox, temporary status, similar to colloquial language in the natural world. The author collected these phrases from multiple sources, inscribing them on file cards, one for each bird species in Britain. The process involved underlining phrases with any agreement across sources, choosing between different spellings for identical sounds, and discarding phrases that were not suggested by more than one source. The finale involved arranging these phrases alphabetically, not by species but by sound, which theoretically enables identification of a bird by its call.
John Bevis is an English freelance writer specialising in nature and the arts, poetry and criticism. His writing career goes hand-in-hand with working in editing, printing and publishing. Books include Printed in Norfolk (RGAP, 2012), a history of the gallery and artists’ publisher Coracle Press, and Aaaaw to Zzzzzd: The Words of Birds (MIT Press, 2010) a study of the various ways we attempt to capture, preserve and imitate the songs of birds, with a lexicon of "bird words". His work is discussed by Ross Hair in Avant-Folk: Small Press Poetry Networks from 1950 to the Present (Liverpool UP, 2016). His book The Keartons: Inventing Nature Photography, was published in 2016 by Uniformbooks. For more information and contact, go to www.johnbevis.com.