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cairN

by Kathleen Jamie

Cairn: a marker on open land, a memorial, a viewpoint shared by strangers

As she reached her 60th year, the acclaimed author and poet Kathleen Jamie turned to a new form of writing: personal notes, prose poems, micro-essays, fragments. In her new book they are arranged together like the stones of a wayside cairn, marking changes to an inner and outer 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

PRAISE FOR KATHLEEN JAMIE

‘It is as if Jamie, wherever she goes, functions as lightning rod, drawing past, present and future together.’ Marina Benjamin, New Statesman 

‘Jamie shows throughout this astonishing work, it is in looking – attuning ourselves to nature and culture, past and present – that we find our compass.’ Barbara Kiser, Nature

‘To read a Jamie essay is to be given a fresh lens through which to view the world.’ Amanda Bell, Irish Times 

‘Jamie’s ability to look and listen, and then to communicate what she sees and hears with clarity and beauty, are the hallmarks of her very particular genius.’ Dani Garavelli, Herald Scotland 

‘A sorceress of the essay form. Never exotic, down to earth, she renders the indefinable to the reader’s ear.’ John Berger