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Kathleen Jamie

Scottish poet and essayist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kathleen Jamie
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Kathleen Jamie FRSL FRSE (born 13 May 1962) is a Scottish poet and essayist.[1][2] In 2021 she became Scotland's fourth Makar.[3]

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Life and work

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Kathleen Jamie is a poet and essayist. Raised in Currie, near Edinburgh, she studied philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, publishing her first poems as an undergraduate. Her writing is rooted in Scottish landscape and culture, and ranges through travel, women's issues, archaeology and visual art. She writes in English and occasionally in Scots.[1][4]

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First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Jamie in 2021

Jamie's collections include The Queen of Sheba (1995). Her 2004 collection The Tree House revealed an increasing interest in the natural world. This book won the Forward Poetry Prize and the Scottish Book of the Year Award. The Overhaul was published in September 2012.[1] It won the 2012 Costa poetry award.[5] For the last decade[when?] Jamie has also written non-fiction. Her collections of essays Findings and Sightlines are considered influential works of nature and landscape writing. On publication in the United States, the latter won the John Burroughs Medal and the Orion Book Award.[1] Jamie writes occasional essays and reviews for the London Review of Books and The Guardian.

A poem by Jamie is inscribed on the national monument at Bannockburn.[6]

In 2014, Jamie set herself the task of writing one poem per week. The resulting poems were collected in The Bonniest Companie, released in 2015, winning 2016 Saltire Society book of the year award.[7][8]

Since 1998, Jamie's literary archive has been held at the National Library of Scotland.[9]

In 2009 Jamie was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature,[10] and in 2018 elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.[2]

In August 2021 Jamie was appointed as the fourth holder of the title of Scots Makar.[11]

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Awards

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Honours

Bibliography

  • Black Spiders (1982)
  • A Flame in Your Heart (with Andrew Greig) (1986)
  • The Way We Live (1987)
  • The Golden Peak: Travels in North Pakistan (1992) (reissued as Among Muslims in 2002)
  • The Autonomous Region: Poems and Photographs from Tibet (1993)
  • The Queen of Sheba (1994)
  • Jizzen (1999)
  • Mr & Mrs Scotland Are Dead (Poems 1980–94) (2002) (shortlisted for the 2003 International Griffin Poetry Prize)
  • The tree house (2004) (winner of the Forward Poetry Prize) and Scottish Book of the Year Award.
  • Findings (2005), essays
  • This weird estate (2007)
  • Sightlines (2012), essays
  • The Overhaul (2012)
  • The Bonniest Companie (2015)
  • Selected Poems (2018)
  • Surfacing (2019), essays
  • Contributor to A New Divan: A Lyrical Dialogue Between East and West, Gingko Library, 2019. ISBN 9781909942288
  • Editor: Antlers of Water: Writing on the Nature and Environment of Scotland (2020)
  • Skeins o Geese (2023), 12 poems complemented by Woodcuts by Jo Sweeting. Published by Fine Press Poetry.
  • Cairn (2024), essays and poems

[17][18]

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References

Further reading

External links

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