‘Let me leave Cairn here as a trail marker, a moment noted, a view from the strange here-and-now,’ Kathleen Jamie states towards the end of the prologue to her exquisite new collection of writings. In more than 40 micro-essays and poems, her keen-eyed view encompasses both an uninhabited island far out at sea and a piece of flint in her hand; it accommodates surfacing memories and also peers into the uncertain future awaiting the next generation.
A balanced tower of ultra-short pieces is a new form for Jamie, the Scottish makar (or national poet), who also pens longer pieces of nature writing, collected into the genre-expanding works: Findings, Sightlines and Surfacing. If, in Cairn, the brevity of the prose is new, the signature traits of her writing persist: exploring human points of connection with the natural world, noticing beauty in the scientific and remaining attuned to the hidden subtleties of language – ‘Corvid, covid… what a difference a letter makes,’ she wryly observes.
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