Notes on the natural world: an exquisite collection from Kathleen Jamie

‘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. Interspersed with the luminous writings are delicate pencil drawings by Miek Zwamborn, their dots and shadings loosely forming natural phenomena observed in the book: birds, stones, the sea.

In ‘Moor’, Jamie notes: ‘We bring the past out of the land and bear the land into the future.’ This ‘past’ stretches to accommodate both personal memories and deeper time. In ‘The Handover’, one of the longest pieces, at eight pages, Jamie accompanies ‘youngsters’ on a climate change march and shares her memories of ‘women tying wool and baby toys on to the chain- link fence’ at Greenham Common. She notes the echo of both protest and cause: along with ‘young people’s fears’ of climate change, the new nuclear threat means ‘now they’ve got their parents’ nightmares to contend with too’.