Kathleen Jamie
Author of Findings
About the Author
Kathleen Jamie is a part-time lecturer in creative writing at St. Andrews University.
Works by Kathleen Jamie
Autumn A Folio Anthology 2 copies
Skeins O Geese 2 copies
The Green Room 1 copy
Skeins o Geese 1 copy
Associated Works
I Wouldn't Thank You for a Valentine: Poems For Young Feminists (1992) — Contributor — 57 copies, 2 reviews
The Poetry Review - Volume 113:4 Winter 2023 — Contributor — 2 copies
Archipelago, Number Nine (Winter 2014) — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1962-05-13
- Gender
- female
- Education
- University of Edinburgh (MA)
- Occupations
- Professor of Poetry
poet
essayist - Organizations
- University of St Andrews
Stirling University - Awards and honors
- Eric Gregory Award (1981)
Royal Society of Literature (fellow)
Scots Makar (2021-2024) - Relationships
- Dee, Tim (travel companion)
- Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Renfrewshire, Scotland, UK
- Places of residence
- Fife, Scotland, UK
- Associated Place (for map)
- Scotland, UK
Members
Reviews
I have been looking forward to reading this book since I read its equally brilliant sequel/companion piece Sightlines last year. Jamie brings a quiet poetic eye to her observations of both the natural world and modern humanity, making many intriguing connections.
She succeeds in making a beautiful and unified whole from essays on a very varied set of subjects, ranging from the nature of darkness, birdwatching, remote uninhabited Scottish islands, the view from Edinburgh's Calton Hill and a show more museum of surgical specimens, to name just a few, while making perceptive observations on the connections with her own life. show less
She succeeds in making a beautiful and unified whole from essays on a very varied set of subjects, ranging from the nature of darkness, birdwatching, remote uninhabited Scottish islands, the view from Edinburgh's Calton Hill and a show more museum of surgical specimens, to name just a few, while making perceptive observations on the connections with her own life. show less
This is a book set mostly, but not entirely in the Scottish countryside. It does also include chapters about the rooftops of Edinburgh and one of that city's more unusual museums, Playfair Hall. The latter chapter was actually my least favourite, perhaps because it is about a museum containing human body parts and I'm the kind of person who can't even look when there are medical dramas on television. My first impression was that it stood out as odd in a book that might otherwise have found show more an obvious home in the nature section of libraries and bookshops. On deeper reflection the chapter is not a misfit, because this is also a book about collections and because mankind is part of nature too.
Jamie goes out, observes what she finds and writes about in beautifully crafted prose. You don't need to read the jacket notes to figure out that she has also won awards for her poetry. This is self-evidently the sort of prose you would expect a poet to produce. I read much of it quite slowly in order to soak in the richness of the words and the observations they convey. Some of the metaphors are superb.
She starts by lamenting the metaphorical link between darkness and evil, which has become so deeply ingrained in our psyche that we miss any positives that darkness might offer. As someone who much prefers the brightness of day, I wasn't entirely convinced by the argument but I enjoyed the journey.
Another favourite section related to the human-bred salmon who failed to return to their breeding ground because, in order to facilitate scientific experiments, they had been deliberately hatched in a stretch of river above waterfalls they would not be able to leap. The wisest fish were not those strong enough to persist in trying to jump, but those who gave up: "Not the survival of the fittest ... but the survival of the ones who give it up as a bad job and settle someplace quiet. A small life in the suburbs. Salmon wisdom." Lowering are targets a little and learning to live with a little less, now there's a message for our times. show less
Jamie goes out, observes what she finds and writes about in beautifully crafted prose. You don't need to read the jacket notes to figure out that she has also won awards for her poetry. This is self-evidently the sort of prose you would expect a poet to produce. I read much of it quite slowly in order to soak in the richness of the words and the observations they convey. Some of the metaphors are superb.
She starts by lamenting the metaphorical link between darkness and evil, which has become so deeply ingrained in our psyche that we miss any positives that darkness might offer. As someone who much prefers the brightness of day, I wasn't entirely convinced by the argument but I enjoyed the journey.
Another favourite section related to the human-bred salmon who failed to return to their breeding ground because, in order to facilitate scientific experiments, they had been deliberately hatched in a stretch of river above waterfalls they would not be able to leap. The wisest fish were not those strong enough to persist in trying to jump, but those who gave up: "Not the survival of the fittest ... but the survival of the ones who give it up as a bad job and settle someplace quiet. A small life in the suburbs. Salmon wisdom." Lowering are targets a little and learning to live with a little less, now there's a message for our times. show less
The third of my library-of-friendship borrowings, 'Findings' is a loose collection of elegantly written and evocative vignettes. Most involve investigating wildlife on remote Scottish islands, but my favourites concerned Edinburgh. Jamie writes of the search for corncrakes and whales, of salmon and peregrine falcons. In Edinburgh, she recounts a trip to Surgeon's Hall museum (which I have thus far been too squeamish to visit) and views from Carlton Hill seen through a telescope. I enjoyed show more these novel perspectives on the city I call my home, while the more wildlife focused chapters offered a pleasing escape outside the city into places I've never been. Although I enjoyed these snapshots, though, the title is very appropriate. 'Findings' is a collection of different topics and anecdotes coincidentally found together, without a clear thread running through. It's very well written, however I tend to prefer essay collections that are more thematically focused. A diverting lockdown read, nonetheless. show less
Although Surfacing is only the second book by [[Kathleen Jamie]] I've read, she's already become one of my favourite essayists and guides to the all too often unseen world around us.
Starting in a cave in the West Highlands, a cave where bone sfrom a bear that lived 45,000 years ago were found, she contemplates the changes in topography since then. Ice ages have come and gone twice. the last one 10,000 years ago. In "the great scheme of things", are we living through "a warm bank holiday show more weekend" before the glaciers return, or will the earth continue to heat up as Jamie seems to believe?
What the retreat of ice and glaciers has revealed are traces of past cultures, surfacing after hundreds of years. Two of the essays here each capture a village recently revealed, but only for now, both under threat from coastal erosion and wind: Quinhagak Alaska, a village by the Bering Sea, the other a Neolithic farming community in Orkney. Jamie's explorations are usually in the north, "a place of entrancing desolation".
Jamie has been called the leading Scottish poet of her generation. Words and their meaning are critical to her. She contemplates a remark about the early Neolithic farmers, knowing they were only a step away from the wild: I began to wonder what it might have meant to them then, back when 'wild' was a new idea. Did stories linger of a way of life before farming, before cattle raising and sheep? Did 'the wild' thrill them, darkly? Shame them?
Who were the people who lived in these places? What happened to them? These aren't new thoughts, but Jamie builds on them:
Starting in a cave in the West Highlands, a cave where bone sfrom a bear that lived 45,000 years ago were found, she contemplates the changes in topography since then. Ice ages have come and gone twice. the last one 10,000 years ago. In "the great scheme of things", are we living through "a warm bank holiday show more weekend" before the glaciers return, or will the earth continue to heat up as Jamie seems to believe?
What the retreat of ice and glaciers has revealed are traces of past cultures, surfacing after hundreds of years. Two of the essays here each capture a village recently revealed, but only for now, both under threat from coastal erosion and wind: Quinhagak Alaska, a village by the Bering Sea, the other a Neolithic farming community in Orkney. Jamie's explorations are usually in the north, "a place of entrancing desolation".
Jamie has been called the leading Scottish poet of her generation. Words and their meaning are critical to her. She contemplates a remark about the early Neolithic farmers, knowing they were only a step away from the wild: I began to wonder what it might have meant to them then, back when 'wild' was a new idea. Did stories linger of a way of life before farming, before cattle raising and sheep? Did 'the wild' thrill them, darkly? Shame them?
Who were the people who lived in these places? What happened to them? These aren't new thoughts, but Jamie builds on them:
By now we number in our billions, have built mega-cities with instant global communications, and send spacecraft to explore unknown shores. We can live to be eighty, ninety, a hundred years old! You early farmers were a success beyond measure. But {now} millions shrink in poverty. Others build high walls and fabricate missiles. Sea levels rise, storm winds are bearing down on us. We are becoming ashamed of our own layer - plastic and waste.show less
There are other essays here, more personal, from Jamie's own life. How to bring the sound of your grandmother's voice to the surface? a trek to Tibet aborted at the border because how could you know about Tienanmen in a pre internet age? Later there is the death of her father. With each essay another layer is added to the accumulation of her own life, a life these wanderings are simultaneously building and revealing for her.
It's difficult to convey a sense of Jamie's rootedness and introspection, her connection to the earth and the wild, so the best thing to do is just read her and discover it for yourself.
Lists
Awards
You May Also Like
Associated Authors
Statistics
- Works
- 33
- Also by
- 15
- Members
- 1,675
- Popularity
- #15,348
- Rating
- 4.0
- Reviews
- 42
- ISBNs
- 73
- Languages
- 6
- Favorited
- 7