Bird Sisters

by Julia Webb

Julia Webb’s Bird Sisters is a surreal journey through sisterhood and the world of the family via the natural world. Fascinated by the “otherness” of things, her poems expose worlds and relationships that are not always entirely comfortable places to exist, and many of them feature transformations of some kind - both real and metaphorical: a woman wears a dress of live bees or becomes a bird and family members turn into owls and sparrows.

In exploring the ways in which both adults and children are casually cruel to one another - often within a mythological framework, Julia Webb blurs the boundaries between fairy tale and real. These families are terrifying in their complexity and dysfunction yet utterly compelling and convincing and with dark undercurrents of humour that ensure they are never bleak.

Praise for Bird Sisters:

“Glittering and shadowy, the 'magic' of this integrated first collection is anchored in the 'real' of nylon sheets, a rented tv , Thetford Forest... It's language is spare and supple, wry, and can stun with such transformations as "a baby dandled / on the knee of the sea" ('Quiet Man Norfolk') and "Water held a knife / to the throat of the village." Beset by the dark instability of a particular family's life, Bird Sisters exerts a powerful hold as if to read it is to be haunted by things one half-remembers.” - Moniza Alvi

Genres: Poetry

80 pages, Paperback

Published May 2, 2016

About the author

Julia Webb is a graduate of the University of East Anglia's poetry MA. In 2011 she won The Poetry Society"s Stanza Competition and 2018 she won the Battered Moons poetry competition. She lives in Norwich where she is a poetry editor for Lighthouse and teaches creative writing. Her first collection Bird Sisters was published by Nine Arches Press in 2016. Her second collection Threat was published by Nine Arches in 2019. Her third collection Threat was published in 2022 and her fourth collection Grey Time was published by Nie Arches Press in 2025.

Reviews

[Catherine Ayres]

Julia Webb uses the central metaphor of birds to unpick the dark secrets of family life in this beautiful book. The reader is drawn into family dynamics and let into the secret world of a family's playfulness, violence and sadness. The poetry is measured and perfectly weighted. I loved it.

[Carrie Etter]

A refreshingly original and varied first book of poetry--highly recommended!

[Louisa Campbell]

Fresh, enchanting. Buy it!

[Tim Love]

Poems from "And Other Poems", Magma, The Rialto, etc, by a poet who's twice been short-listed in the Bridport. There's a chronological sweep to the poems overlaid by recurrent themes. Subjects are often described by recording people's reactions to them. This also applies when the subject is a person - we learn about them by observing their interactions with others. Several of the pieces centre around a family where the Father is strict and religious, the mother negotiating between him and the two daughters - the narrator and an older Alice. There's sibling rivalry and cooperation between the girls. This core family concept is explored using anecdote, mythology, etc. The book begins with "Sisters (part i)" which has 5 sections (some more Realistic than others), each describing a persona/trait. The first begins "This sister is the bones of the outfit", the replacement of "brains" in the usual phrase by "bones" being a hint of things to come. On p.23 there's "Sisters (part ii)" with 6 more sections, an example being "This sister has neat borders,/ she is carefully cultivated,/ an exercise in quiet self-control".

The book's final sequence uses circus personae (freaks and performers) to explore sister-hood (or maybe aspects of self-hood). Father is explored in "Family Values" as "Sun daddy" and is imagined as a horse in "Night Sickness" etc. The mythologising persists at the father's death, the mother's death a cause for more sibling rivalry.

Birds (owls in particular) feature. Owls are creatures of the night. Seemingly quiet and wise, they eat creatures whole, leaving bones. The narrator and other people transform - the sister is viewed as a sparrow and owl (one poem's entitled "My owl sister mistakes me for a mouse")", and "my owl mother" appears. Night/dream imagery is prevalent.

Bees (a popular theme in recent UK poetry) appear first on p.11 and finally on p.66, popping up throughout. On p.13 they are "The bees that sleep inside me". By the end of the poem "I might take flight". That outward movement is replicated in "A Bird Inside" where the initial "I wear a bird inside me" develops into "Today I am blackbird,/ tomorrow I will be all owl"

The most common thematic movement is Confinement/Release - physically in "Thetford Forest", but also breaking free of strict upbringing, situations and definitions by subversion or flight rather than confrontation. Poems end with waking, singing, or (in "Gin Fox", "Bee Mornings", and "A Bird Inside") releasing. More things unravel than ravel.

2 sub-categories of poem emerge from the mix -

* Prose - The Piano Lesson, The Trap, Lent, Rain, The Callers, Visiting Time, The Miracle. These are family-based, usually involving religion, and use CAPS to emphasise words. I wouldn't call them prose-poems - they're Flash. "Rain" ends with "I WOULD like a doll who can REALLY CRY!" which is a good way to end any text.
* Lists of definitions - of sisters, water, etc.

[Sophie]

Knowing Julia and having heard a number of these poems read aloud definitely added to my enjoyment of Bird Sisters. A strong powerful collection; worth seeking out and spending time with.

My favourite pieces were Definitions (i) & (ii). Slightly more abstract in their simplicity.

[Cooch]

Three and a half stars

The overall concept and linking of the poems is good. There some very good poems, some good poems and some weaker ones. The volume starts strongly but fades as it continues.