Islands of inspiration: a poet’s life on Shetland

Shetland comprises an archipelago of some 300 islands and skerries situated roughly half way between London and the Arctic Circle. Stereotyped by many outsiders as bleak and somehow ‘on the edge’, according to the poet Jen Hadfield’s stylish memoir – about her 17 years of living there – it can be more illuminating to see these places as somehow central to everything.

Storm Pegs is as much an account of the author finding new personal bearings as a series of magic lantern slides about insular life. The title alludes to a traditional piece of perforated wood used by mariners to keep track of their whereabouts: you stuck the peg in a hole and navigated accordingly. The subtitle stresses that she is an incomer (a sooth-moother). She arrived in her twenties for a literary festival, and now dwells in a precarious caravan, mentally mapping her position in the busy flow of the world.