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Cairn
Cairn: A marker on open land, a memorial, a viewpoint shared by strangers.
For the last five years poet and author Kathleen Jamie has been turning her attention to a new form of writing: micro-essays, prose poems, notes and fragments. Placed together, like the stones of a wayside cairn, they mark a changing psychic and physical landscape.
The virtuosity of these short pieces is both subtle and deceptive. Jamie's intent 'noticing' of the natural world is suffused with a clear-eyed awareness of all we endanger. She considers the future her children face, while recalling her own childhood and notes the lost innocence in the way we respond to the dramas of nature. With meticulous care she marks the point she has reached, in life and within the cascading crises of our times.
Cairn resonates with a beauty and wisdom that only an artist of Jamie's calibre could achieve.
For the last five years poet and author Kathleen Jamie has been turning her attention to a new form of writing: micro-essays, prose poems, notes and fragments. Placed together, like the stones of a wayside cairn, they mark a changing psychic and physical landscape.
The virtuosity of these short pieces is both subtle and deceptive. Jamie's intent 'noticing' of the natural world is suffused with a clear-eyed awareness of all we endanger. She considers the future her children face, while recalling her own childhood and notes the lost innocence in the way we respond to the dramas of nature. With meticulous care she marks the point she has reached, in life and within the cascading crises of our times.
Cairn resonates with a beauty and wisdom that only an artist of Jamie's calibre could achieve.
136 pages, Paperback
Published June 13, 2024
About the author
Kathleen Jamie
64 books298 followersKathleen Jamie is a poet, essayist and travel writer, one of a remarkable clutch of Scottish writers picked out in 1994 as the ‘new generation poets’ – it was a marketing ploy at the time but turns out to have been a very prescient selection. She became Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Stirling in 2011.
http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org....
http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org....
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
July 12, 2024
Great, great writing. She just gets better. Spare and essential Jamie finds the heart and soul of the natural world and the damage which we have done.
June 29, 2024
As she approached age 60, Kathleen Jamie found her style changing. Whereas her other essay collections alternate extended nature or travel pieces with few-page vignettes, Cairn eschews longer material and instead alternates poems with micro-essays on climate crisis and outdoor experiences. In the prologue she calls these “distillations and observations. Testimonies” that she has assembled into “A cairn of sorts.”
As in Surfacing, she writes many of the autobiographical fragments in the second person. The book is melancholy at times, haunted by all that has been lost and will be lost in the future:
In “The Bass Rock,” Jamie laments the effect that bird flu has had on this famous gannet colony and wishes desperately for better news:
Natural wonders remind her of her own mortality and the insignificance of human life against deep time. “I can imagine the world going on without me, which one doesn’t at 30.” She questions the value of poetry in a time of emergency: “If we are entering a great dismantling, we can hardly expect lyric to survive. How to write a lyric poem?” (from “Summer”). The same could be said of any human endeavour in the face of extinction: We question the point but still we continue.
My two favourite pieces were “The Handover,” about going on an environmental march with her son and his friends in Glasgow and comparing it with the protests of her time (Greenham Common and nuclear disarmament) – doom and gloom was ever thus – and the title poem, which piles natural image on image like a cone of stones. Although I prefer the depth of Jamie’s other books to the breadth of this one, she is an invaluable nature writer for her wisdom and eloquence, and I am grateful we have heard from her again after five years.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
As in Surfacing, she writes many of the autobiographical fragments in the second person. The book is melancholy at times, haunted by all that has been lost and will be lost in the future:
What do we sense on the moor but ghost folk,
ghost deer, even ghost wolf. The path itself is a
phantom, almost erased in ling and yellow tormentil (from “Moor”)
In “The Bass Rock,” Jamie laments the effect that bird flu has had on this famous gannet colony and wishes desperately for better news:
The light glances on the water. The haze clears, and now the rock is visible; it looks depleted. But hallelujah, a pennant of twenty-odd gannets is passing, flying strongly, now rising now falling They’ll be Bass Rock birds. What use the summer sunlight, if it can’t gleam on a gannet’s back? You can only hope next year will be different. Stay alive! You call after the flying birds. Stay alive!
Natural wonders remind her of her own mortality and the insignificance of human life against deep time. “I can imagine the world going on without me, which one doesn’t at 30.” She questions the value of poetry in a time of emergency: “If we are entering a great dismantling, we can hardly expect lyric to survive. How to write a lyric poem?” (from “Summer”). The same could be said of any human endeavour in the face of extinction: We question the point but still we continue.
My two favourite pieces were “The Handover,” about going on an environmental march with her son and his friends in Glasgow and comparing it with the protests of her time (Greenham Common and nuclear disarmament) – doom and gloom was ever thus – and the title poem, which piles natural image on image like a cone of stones. Although I prefer the depth of Jamie’s other books to the breadth of this one, she is an invaluable nature writer for her wisdom and eloquence, and I am grateful we have heard from her again after five years.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
September 12, 2024
A series of short, some very short, non-fiction pieces on the Scottish environment. I find it difficult to overstate how much I enjoyed this book. What seems like simple prose, is a powerful, elegant, flowing series of short pieces, almost musings and observations on nature. Highly poetic, which is not surprising as Jamie is also Makar - Scotland's national poet.
Although obviously a much later book, it reminded of Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain a little - not just because they are both Scottish women writing about nature, but more because of the way they write about it. They are not just observers of nature, though fine observers they are as any good writer must be, but they are situated within nature. They are partaking of it, not merely commenting on it. The big difference is that Jamie's book is much more melancholy reflecting the state of, and decline of, nature in her surrounds.
I could have read this book in one sitting, but I stretched it out for 4 days to savour it more. I shall look out for more of her work. I did not know her writing before this book, but if this is anything to go by, I shall look for more.
Although obviously a much later book, it reminded of Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain a little - not just because they are both Scottish women writing about nature, but more because of the way they write about it. They are not just observers of nature, though fine observers they are as any good writer must be, but they are situated within nature. They are partaking of it, not merely commenting on it. The big difference is that Jamie's book is much more melancholy reflecting the state of, and decline of, nature in her surrounds.
I could have read this book in one sitting, but I stretched it out for 4 days to savour it more. I shall look out for more of her work. I did not know her writing before this book, but if this is anything to go by, I shall look for more.
July 12, 2024
A collection of writings, fragments, observations, memories, by the nature writi g Scottish poet. A collective witnessing of changes in the local environment, and of migratory patterms disrupted, of things once common now departed.
As she arrives at her 60th year, she begins to ask different questions, about the next generation and the one after that, if there will indeed be one as children question whether to bring another generation into this vastly changing world.
As she arrives at her 60th year, she begins to ask different questions, about the next generation and the one after that, if there will indeed be one as children question whether to bring another generation into this vastly changing world.
September 8, 2024
I can’t find my words today. There are some lovely reviews here. Check them out.
June 20, 2024
Excellent collection
This collection of short non-fiction pieces and poetry is, as one would expect from Kathleen Jamie, beautifully written, with turns of phrase that make you pause, re-read, reconsider and sometimes cause a subtle shift in your appreciation of its subject. Her usual themes are here - nature, the environment, Scotland. It is a collection to dip into, not to gulp down in one sitting, it is a collection to ponder with, to spend time with, and to enjoy. Beautiful stuff.
This collection of short non-fiction pieces and poetry is, as one would expect from Kathleen Jamie, beautifully written, with turns of phrase that make you pause, re-read, reconsider and sometimes cause a subtle shift in your appreciation of its subject. Her usual themes are here - nature, the environment, Scotland. It is a collection to dip into, not to gulp down in one sitting, it is a collection to ponder with, to spend time with, and to enjoy. Beautiful stuff.
July 20, 2024
Quite simply Kathleen Jamie is one of the greatest living writers today! I have loved her previous nature writing but this is an intense shot, the pure essence of her fabulous words.
August 16, 2024
Pause. Notice the change, feel the fear. This is beautiful writing.
For the frightening moments, a reminder that we are still here and still care.
For the frightening moments, a reminder that we are still here and still care.
June 27, 2024
Absolutely beautiful, as ever. What a delight to be reading Kathleen Jamie again. Her return with her new book, Cairn, is masterful – in this new collection of short pieces and poems, she exceeds herself, the format enabling her to chisel each piece to perfection until what is left of a rough stone (though beautiful to begin with) is its shimmering centre. She brings all of her grace and poetic mastery to this collection, one that deserves reading and rereading often. Full review: https://bookerthanyou.blogspot.com/20...
July 19, 2024
A book of fragmentary pieces of writing as its title might suggest. Whether the book as a whole amounts to more than the sum of these fragments is debatable. The general theme is the erosion of the natural world through climate change coupled with middle-age appreciation of finite quality of human life. There are no solutions or revelations here but there are finely reflected moments captured poetically and pithily. There are pieces that do not resonate much with me even on re-reading and are a little obscure and other pieces that do resonate and delight from the outset. Given the brevity of its 40 plus pieces, it is easy to dip into it again and again as a bedside book and enjoy the quality of the someone who uses words so well. This prospect is made even more inviting given that the paperback copy of the book is produced with artistic images of nature throughout and a gatefold cover.
August 23, 2024
"a bill like a long nib that could write its own epitaph. The sobbing trill gliding into silence and bone." This book has been one of my favorite's of the year, not least because of its haunting words. Jamie interwines poetry and the essay form into a seamless peice of non-fiction. Cairn captures feelings of eco-grief and eco-guilt profoundly in this way: instead of using desensitising stats / figures, her non-fiction draws upon the emotional reality of the anthropocene. She notices the moments where one can literally feel the planet slipping out of forgivable grasp and into darkness, and presents them with the vulnerability needed for one to reconnect to the Climate Crisis. Cannot recommend this book enough, it is a calling to reflect upon an Earth where soon there will be "no-one left alive to call me home".
July 26, 2024
i love anything that’s written in a fragmentary, vignette-y way so i loved this book before i started it.
i also really enjoy nature writing, especially when it’s not too idealised and written more honestly, which this book was.
this is my first of jamie’s works but it won’t be my last.
i also really enjoy nature writing, especially when it’s not too idealised and written more honestly, which this book was.
this is my first of jamie’s works but it won’t be my last.
July 12, 2024
Peaceful, needs reading again in fragments
July 24, 2024
Just beautiful, as always with her books. I think the essay collections are my favourites, but everything she writes is gorgeous and I enjoyed the little fragments of life and thought.
August 8, 2024
Wish it had been longer! Want more more more of her writing
August 8, 2024
Such an easy, breezy, moving read. Absolutely love.
August 14, 2024
luv her
August 16, 2024
The collection of poems and short prose pieces really does work and each is well crafted.
Read
August 31, 2024An absolutely beautiful book. I didn't want it to end.
September 3, 2024
Beautiful
September 9, 2024
Thoughtful collection of writing mainly about nature but also everyday events. Nicely paced with a mixture of prose and poems.
September 11, 2024
The common curlew, as the old books have it,
Fragments, essays, poems & notes, following the natural world, and the mess we have made of it. Beautiful.
August 17, 2024
Kathleen Jamie is clear in the prologue that this collection is different to her previous, that this collection addresses much more directly the climate change affecting the natural world she so carefully studies and lyrically describes. As a result, along with the nostalgia for her experiences of time spent in nature is added an additional nostalgia for nature itself in the face of the seemingly inevitable decline of the natural world. Perhaps her previous collection (Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie) hinted at these changes in nature, but she has chosen this time to directly confront them, with the results being less a celebration of nature and more a lamentation. Still, she had done this with all her usually poetical craft with the results being a profound collection of essays and poems touching on the very heart of the natural world. This collections of stories form a kind of Cairn itself on the surface of nature writing by providing markers and direction for humankind. It seems inevitable that this Cairn marks the waypoints of our descent into climate crisis, but there is hope that this is not the only time we may pass this Cairn, we may yet pass it again from the other direction on our future road to recovery from the crisis.
September 9, 2024
Stunning, beautiful & my book of the year so far, absolutely loved it from beginning to end, I’ll be delving into her back catalogue & look forward to reading this gem again & again.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews