Terrain

by Jean Harrison

This second collection from Jean Harrison features an increasingly mature and confident poet, able to take in the terrain and map every detail with precision. Here is a poet ‘sitting and watching’, taking in the ‘full details’ ‘as a hunter might, or a surveyor’; a poet who can merge into the background, as though ‘half-asleep’ yet be ‘alert the moment a mouse scratches’; a poet who senses the smallest of disturbances and who ‘seems to know something most of us don’t, but what?’

Bursting with incisive wit, with a deft tenderness that defies sentimentality, as when her ‘thoughts slip / through the walls to a friend / who struggles to hold on…’ Jean Harrison invites the reader to become with her, ‘porous to greens, black, pinks, reds that flame off walls’; to savour places that are ‘desolate in a satisfactory way’ and to finally, ‘Go home / shut your eyes, remember the silence / of a day without wind.’

Terrain is a moving, sharply focussed, multi-layered treasure trove from an accomplished writer.

80 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2012

About the author

Jean Harrison is retired, writing steadily and has poetry published in a number of magazines. Her poem ‘Woman on the Moon’ was short-listed for the Forward Prize for best single poem in 2004. She lives in Settle.

Reviews

[John Oswald · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve shared three of Jean’s books here since she died last year. Reminder: she was my cousin (once removed). A published poet and novelist. And one of those family members you have a particular soft spot for and yet you never really got to know or spend nearly enough time with. Reading her poetry is like getting to know her. And now her second book of poetry - Terrain (from 2012 - needless to say she never told anyone in the family about her publications!). Her powers of observation are acute; her playful joining of dots is droll and sometimes poignant. I’ve had fun sleuthing the paintings she writes poems about and conjecturing where she might have seen them (hint: pretty sure it’s a gallery in Kendall). There’s also a deep sense of love in here which feels so personal, so intrinsic to her nature. This book makes me want to record the little strange things and write my own collection - it’s brilliant. Also makes me reflect on my own family - I’m ‘once removed’ from Jean yet it feels like I’m closer to her than almost everyone else because of this wonderful collection (plus her other poems and novels..) #guehennoreads #booksofinstagram #booksof2021 #settlesessionspoetry