Isobel Dixon Launches The Tempest Prognosticator at Love Books

by Amanda on Sep 29th, 2011

An intimate launch for The Tempest Prognosticator at Melville’s Love Books marked the end of Isobel Dixon’s South African launch tour. Dixon will be flying back home to the UK tomorrow after a number of readings in the Karoo and Cape Town, including a launch in her hometown of Graaff Reinet and a collaboration at her sister’s gallery in Oudtshoorn where two artists produced works for an exhibition based on the manuscript of The Tempest Prognosticator. The reading at Love Books was of a much smaller scale which allowed Dixon to take the time to speak personally to all her guests – something both rare and very special.

Kate Rogan from Love Books introduced Dixon, telling the audience how she and Dixon had met at Stellenbosch University, “a horrifying 20 or so years ago.” Dixon cut in saying, “they weren’t horrifying they were spectacular!”

“What I remember most about Isobel,” continued Rogan, “is that while I was struggling with literary theory and structuralism, Isobel had fast tracked and was already teaching and helping people like me to get through my English degree, I think Isobel was always someone who stood out. It is no surprise that she has achieved what she has in London as a literary agent doing an incredible job promoting South African writers and selling rights all over the world. Every writer who is anyone in South Africa is on Isobel’s books. In between all of that she has found the time to write beautiful poetry and The Tempest Prognosticator is her third volume of poetry, one of the others was Weather Eye for which she won an Olive Schreiner prize.”

Dixon then took the podium, dispensing with the microphone and giving guests a taste of her work through a reading of select poems interspersed with vibrant explanations. The first treat was “The Whiteness of the Whale” a poem about a whale who swam up the Thames and could not make it back to the sea. This was followed by an exploratory piece about Cape Town from the perspective of a car guard and “Requiem” which concerns disintegrating pickled sharks. Dixon then brought out a first time spring special for guests and read a fresh, as of yet untitled Joburg poem, recently hand written on the paper she read from. In “Toktokkie” Dixon manages to combine an African beetle, Fred Astaire and a reference to Eugene Marais.

After reading the title poem of the collection, Dixon concluded by saying that she called the book The Tempest Prognosticator, “just to give everyone who introduces me a really hard time.” She also revealed the title’s origin in a 19th century weather predicting device, otherwise known as a Leech Barometer. The Leech Barometer consisted of 12 glass jars, with 12 chords attached to some whalebone in the narrow neck of each flask, and a bell in the middle. The animating device was a leech in each jar that responded to changes in atmospheric conditions. The man who invented the device was called George Merryweather. “After reading this,” Dixon said “there was no way I could not write a poem about it.”

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