This is the first collection of critical essays on the writing of Kathleen Jamie. Kathleen Jamie's works are classics. No one can read Kathleen Jamie and remain indifferent or unchanged. Nationally acclaimed since her first major publications in the 1980s, Jamie stands out from other contemporary poets in her exceptional musicality, her strikingly unusual perspectives, her wry humour, translucent imagery, and hard-edged economy of expression. These 16 newly commissioned critical essays and 7 previously unpublished poems by leading poets make up the first full-length study of Kathleen Jamie's writing. The essays discuss all of her poetry collections, including The Queen of Sheba (1994), Jizzen (1999), Mr and Mrs Scotland Are Dead: Poems 1980-94 (2002), The Tree House (2004) and The Overhaul (2012), as well as her travel writing, including Among Muslims (2002), her nature writing, Findings (2005) and Sightlines (2012) and her collaborative work, including Frissure (2013).
Whether engaging with national politics, with gender, with landscape and place, or with humanity's relation to the natural environment, this volume demonstrates that Kathleen Jamie's verse teaches us new ways of listening, of seeing and of being in the contemporary world. It presents the first collection of scholarly essays on Kathleen Jamie, one of the UK's foremost living poets. It contains creative responses to Jamie's work by leading Scottish, Irish and English poets, including Michael Longley, Andrew Greig, Leontia Flynn and Fiona Sampson. It provides a full bibliography of works by and about Kathleen Jamie. It includes an audio recording of Kathleen Jamie, reading from works discussed in the volume.
