Cairn - Kathleen Jamie

Cairn by Kathleen Jamie / ISBN 9781914502002 / 144-page paperback with flaps published in 2024 by Sort Of Books (UK)

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Innovative non-fiction by one of the pioneers of new nature writing

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

For the last five years poet and author Kathleen Jamie has been turning her attention to a new form of writing: micro-essays, prose poems, notes and fragments. Placed together, like the stones of a wayside cairn, they mark a changing psychic and physical 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.

'This marvel of a book is a profound meditation on the precariousness of the planet ... these pieces kept bringing tears to my eyes, catching me offguard ... it is what art or, in this case, wonderful writing can do'--Kate Kellaway, Observer