The Tree House

By Kathleen Jamie

For several years now, Kathleen Jamie's work has addressed two principal concerns: how we negotiate with the natural world, and how we should define our conduct within family and society. In The Tree House Jamie argues - as Burns did before her - for an engagement of the whole being through a kind of practical earthly spirituality. These often startling encounters with animals, birds, and other humans propose a way of living which recognises the earth as home to many different consciousnesses -- and a means of authentic engagement with ‘this, the only world’. Together they form one of the most powerful poetic statements of recent years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Sep 30, 2009
• ISBN: 9780330474436

Kathleen Jamie

Kathleen Jamie was born in the west of Scotland in 1962. Her poetry collection The Tree House (Picador, 2004), won both the Forward Prize and the Scottish Book of the Year Award. Mr and Mrs Scotland are Dead was shortlisted for the 2003 International Griffin Prize. Her most recent collection, The Overhaul, was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize 2012 and won the Costa Poetry Award 2012. Kathleen Jamie’s non-fiction books include the highly regarded Findings and Sightlines. She is Chair of Creative Writing at Stirling University, and lives with her family in Fife.

Book preview

The Tree House

Kathleen Jamie was born in the west of Scotland in 1962, and educated at Edinburgh University, where she studied philosophy. Her poetry collections include The Queen of Sheba (1994) and Jizzen (1999), both of which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award. Her book of selected poems Mr & Mrs Scotland Are Dead (2002) was shortlisted for the Griffin International Poetry Prize.

Kathleen Jamie also writes non-fiction. Her account of travels in northern Pakistan, Among Muslims, was reissued in 2002. She holds a part-time post as lecturer in creative writing at St Andrews University and lives in Fife.

Also by Kathleen Jamie

POETRY

Jizzen (1999)

Mr & Mrs Scotland Are Dead:

Poems 1980-94 (2002)

NON-FICTION

Among Muslims:

Meetings at the frontiers of Pakistan (2002)

The Tree House

K A T H L E E N   J A M I E

PICADOR

First published 2004 by Picador

This electronic edition published 2009 by Picador

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