Winner of the 2012 Costa Poetry Award, the latest collection by Kathleen Jamie, “the leading Scottish poet of her generation” (The Sunday London Times)
The Overhaul
Poems
- Winner of the 2012 Costa Book Award for Poetry
See when it all unravels—the entire project
reduced to threads of moss fleeing a nor’wester;
d’you ever imagine chasing just one strand, letting it lead you
to an unsung cleft in a rock, a place you could take to,
dig yourself in—but what are the chances of that?
Of the birds,
few remain all winter; half a dozen waders
mediate between sea and shore, that space confirmed
—don’t laugh—by your own work.
—from “Materials”
reduced to threads of moss fleeing a nor’wester;
d’you ever imagine chasing just one strand, letting it lead you
to an unsung cleft in a rock, a place you could take to,
dig yourself in—but what are the chances of that?
Of the birds,
few remain all winter; half a dozen waders
mediate between sea and shore, that space confirmed
—don’t laugh—by your own work.
—from “Materials”
The Overhaul continues Kathleen Jamie’s lyric inquiry into the aspects of the world our rushing lives elide, and even threaten. Whether she is addressing birds or rivers, or the need to accept loss, or sometimes, the desire to escape our own lives, her poetry is earthy and rigorous, her language at once elemental and tender. The Overhaul is a midlife book of repair, restitution, and ultimately hope—of the wisest and most worldly kind.
$16.00
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About the Author
Credit: Alan Young
Praise
- “These mid-life poems are deceptively simple. . . . [Jamie] examine[s] with lyrical acuity the way humans dwell in, delight in and despoil the natural world.”—Best American Poetry
- “[Jamie’s] timing is perfect and her language makes new frontiers from common content.”—Washington Independent Review of Books
