WORLDS AND LIVES
With Birds You’re Never Lonely
A more attentive relationship with nature unsettles narrow assumptions about hearing, solitude and belonging.
Read the accessible text and study notes
What happens?
A noisy cafe prompts memories of a forest, hearing, trees and a woman’s inherited knowledge of birds.
Big idea
A more attentive relationship with nature unsettles narrow assumptions about hearing, solitude and belonging.
“slam”
Onomatopoeic verb — The cafe’s noise feels abrupt and invasive.
“silence”
Reconsidered noun — A quiet soundscape need not mean emptiness or disconnection.
“sturdiness”
Abstract noun — The trees’ physical assurance becomes something the speaker envies.
“family”
Metaphor — Urban trees are understood through the relationships their setting prevents.
Form
Free verse presented in couplets; movement between cafe, forest and remembered conversation joins contrasting kinds of listening.
Context
Antrobus writes from a D/deaf perspective. The poem also values Maori knowledge transmitted between generations.
Compare
Lines Written in Early Spring: attention to nature. Homing: knowledge passed between generations.
Voice, tone and feelings
Cafe and recollection · Overloaded and distracted — Ordinary machinery makes hearing difficult while the speaker thinks about a different soundscape.
Forest and hearing aids · Attentive and questioning — Switching sound off reveals a form of presence that does not depend on audible noise.
Woman and London trees · Connected, then sorrowful — Inherited knowledge of birds leads to concern for isolated trees in an urban world.
Recall
Why is the forest’s silence different from loneliness?
Read the full poem in your own AQA anthology. Anthology information and source.