Kathleen Jamie was born in the west of Scotland in 1962, and educated in Edinburgh, where she studied philosophy. Her poetry collections include The Queen of Sheba (1994), and Jizzen (1999), both of which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial award. Her Selected Poems, Mr & Mrs Scotland are Dead (2002), was shortlisted for the International Griffin Poetry Prize, and in 2002 she was awarded a Creative Scotland Award.

As well as poetry Kathleen Jamie writes non-fiction, such as Findings (Sort Of Books, 2005), which merges travel and nature writing. Her poetry collection, The Tree House (2004), won the 2004 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year) and the 2005 Scottish Arts Council Book of the Year Award. She holds a part-time post as Lecturer in Creative Writing at St Andrews University and lives in Fife. Her latest collection is Waterlight: selected poems (Graywolf Press, 2007).

TOP 

Related links

› Kathleen Jamie at Poetry Archive

› www.contemporarywriters.com

› Kathleen Jamie on the Poetry Archive

› Kathleen Jamie had a 'Close Encounter' with Stanley Kunitz for an event at the National Library of Scotland. Read more on our Reading Room.

TOP 

Books I love

An old favourite
WS Graham. Especially 'Loch Thom'.

A new favourite
The wonderful Stanley Kunitz. His book The Wild Braid about him at age 100(!), in his garden, with poems and notebook entries and photographs, is just wonderful.

A current interest
'To create a form is to find a way to contemplate, perhaps to comprehend, our human urgencies.' Robert Penn Warren  

Kathleen Jamie, November 2008

TOP 

Featured poem

Glamourie

When I found I'd lost you –
not beside me, nor ahead,
nor right nor left not
your green jacket moving

between the trees anywhere,
I waited a long while
before wandering on: no wren
jinked in the undergrowth,

not a twig snapped.
It was hardly the Wildwood,
just some auld fairmer's
shelter belt, but red haws

reached out to me,
and between fallen leaves
pretty white flowers bloomed
late into their year. I tried

calling out, or think
I did, but your name
shrivelled on my tongue,
so instead I strolled on

through the wood's good
offices, and duly fell
to wondering if I hadn't
simply made it all up: you,

I mean, everything,
my entire life....either way,
nothing now could touch me
bar my hosts, who appeared

as diffuse golden light,
as tiny spiders
examining my hair....
what gratitude I felt then -

I might be gone for ages,
maybe seven years!
-and such sudden joie de vivre
that when a ditch gaped

right there instantly in front of me
I jumped it, blithe as a girl -
ach, I jumped clear over it,
without even pausing to think.

Kathleen Jamie © 2008