Frequently Bought Together
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
by Kathleen Jamie
|
by Kathleen Jamie
|
by Edwin Morgan
|
by Mick Imlah
|
The Cone Gatherers: A Haunting Story of Violence and Love (Canongate Classics) by Robin Jenkins |
Product details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
The first word of the collection is "remember", the last is "poetry" and in between Jamie extols the balm of stories, the ease of words to soothe loss. She also celebrates the profuse, particular and robust dialect of Scots-English in poems such as "Bairnsang" for her "wee toshie man" and "Lucky Bag". She speaks poignantly of the loss of lore and old uses of language by a people who didn't have to leave to suffer dislocation: "we emigrants of no farewell / who keep our bit language / in jokes and quotes / our working knowledge of coal-pits, fevers, lost." In a wonderfully ironic "Forget It", she writes of learning about the slums where she used to live in history class: "Ours is a long driech / now-demolished street." In the central poem, "Ultrasound", she beckons her unborn son, "sleeping in a bone creel" with a polite hopefulness. "Let's close the door, / and rearrange / the dark, red curtain." Bringing him home, motherhood gives her the need to touch other living things at the top of the garden in "a complicit homage of equals". Other poems such as "Bonaly" in which she boasts of her time as the House three-legged champion and "Mrs McKellar, her martyrdom", show her jaunty comic talent. In "Song of Sunday", survival is simply a matter of getting through the dull day, the "tatties / peeled lovelessly, blinded / pale and drowned." One final poem, "St Bride's" glides deftly and surprisingly from "feathers / of sunlight, glanced from a butterknife / quiver on the ceiling" to the sharp twist that delivers her daughter, "the placenta / following, like a fist of purple kelp."
Jamie is hugely enjoyable and has the canny knack of introducing an almost inconsequential pathos among the stark and simple imagery. --Cherry Smyth
Product Description
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?
 |
35% buy the item featured on this page: Jizzen£6.99 |
 |
24% buy The Tree House £5.66 |
 |
18% buy Findings £4.39 |
 |
17% buy Among Muslims: Meetings at the frontiers of Pakistan £5.98 |
Customer Reviews
|
There are no customer reviews yet.
|
|||
|
Video reviews
|
 |
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
Your Recent History
(What's this?)|
After viewing product detail pages or search results, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. |
