• Cover of The Beauty of Vultures with poems by Wendy McGrath and photos by Danny Miles. The background is grey with old-fashion camera details in the right-hand side. The title "Beauty of Vultures" rests within the 'lens" in red. The author names — Wendy McGrath and Danny Miles  —  circle the circumference of the 'lens'.

The Beauty of Vultures

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978-177439-086-3 | 2025 April | 100 Pages

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The interplay between photography, nature and poetic form is on full display in Wendy McGrath's and Danny Miles' collaborative new work The Beauty of Vultures.

This innovative collection takes readers into the surprisingly chatty world of birds, whose avian artistry and poignant plumage mimics the formally and structurally inventive tones found in each poem. The language wings its way between funny and serious, poignant and morbid, while always drawing parallels between the poets thoughts and the cameras eye. From peahens telling off their elaborately festooned romantic partners, robins empty eggs recalling air raid tests after WWII, to seagulls serving as harbingers of humanity's ongoing crimes against nature, each unit of photography melds seamlessly with its poetic doppelgänger.

The Beauty of Vultures thrums with sonorous delight as we witness Danny Miles' bird photographs and Wendy McGraths poems perform an intricate and masterful pasodoble, where words and image respond to and illuminate one another. This collaborative, deeply imaginative, formally inventive, at times playful and polyphonic evocation of birds especially many of our common species made me gasp at the world with wonder.”
— Julia Zarankin, award-winning author of Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder

“Birds have always provided a special opportunity for entry into awareness of our environments, and ourselves available to everyone who dares to look. The Beauty of Vultures is a special call to awareness, connecting the visual to the soul, giving us permission to look, and look again, and to experience our environment in our own way to say without risk of censure, it is beautiful.”
— Justin peter, Past President, Toronto Ornithological Club