The Tree House

by Kathleen Jamie

For several years now, Kathleen Jamie's work has addressed two principal 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 recognizes 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.

Genres: Poetry, Scotland, Nature

49 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2004

About the author

Kathleen Jamie is a poet, essayist and travel writer, one of a remarkable clutch of Scottish writers picked out in 1994 as the ‘new generation poets’ – it was a marketing ploy at the time but turns out to have been a very prescient selection. She became Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Stirling in 2011.

http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org....

Reviews

[Sophie Breese · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favourite poems ever is in this collection: ‘The Whale-Watcher’.

[Mandy Haggith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant. Many of these poems are short and all of them have a clarity that makes them easy to read, yet they contain within their apparent simplicity tremendous depth. The book contains one of my favourite tree poems - Alder - and these lines give a sample of how Kathleen Jamie combines well-researched accuracy with bottomless questioning..

alder, who unfolded
before the receding glaciers

first one leaf then another,
won't you teach me

a way to live
on this damp ambiguous earth?

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favourite books of poetry of recent years and I rank Jamie above the supposed heavyweights of Scottish poetry, John Burnside and Robin Robertson. She deserves greater recognition as one of the best poets writing in scotland and even the UK right now.
This is a short book of small poems dealing mainly with the natural world and all living things; honing in like the macro setting of a camera to give close ups of birds and frogs, the leaves of trees, flowers, revealing them in all their strangeness and beauty.
There is much to love about this book. Jamie has evolved her voice over the years and the register she chooses for this book suits the subject perfectly.
The book is a cry to look again at how we engage with the natural world. She writes in a simple unpretentious language in terse couplets and quatrains that rarely stray over 3 or 4 beats a line. She is a master of negative space and covers enormous ground with few words, knowing precisely what to leave out and leave in. The poems are pared down and sparse likely exquisitely pruned roses. Her style is a fusion of the steely-eyed and the tender open-hearted.

Some favourite moments:

I wish my whole battened
heart were a property
like this, with swallows
in every room -
(from Swallows)

The world's
mind is such interstices;
cells charging with light of day -
(from Pipistrelles)

What was it,
I'd have asked, to exist
so bright and fateless

while time coursed
through our every atom
over its bed of stones - ?
(from Rhodedendrons)

Though this is unashamedly lyric poetry, nature poetry, poetry of personal revelation - it is not introspective and navel gazing. It is a clear eyed view and feels like a call to arms. Jamie shows a huge empathy and kinship for the natural world, often writing from the point of view of a tree or flower or even a puddle. This is no gimmick. There's a sense of dialogue with animals and landscape where she is looking to them to help deepen and make sense of our lives. She is calling for new ways of seeing, of listening. She empties herself to make space for all this incredible STUFF. The world is talking to us all the time if only we would listen. And what she brings back from this conversation with the natural world is enormously optimistic - a sense of hope and love and community.

My favourite poems are The Dipper, The Puddle, Flight of Birds, Pipistrelles, Swallows.

If I had any criticism , it might be that she goes too far, wears her heart on her sleeve, but I don't think that would be fair. She's earned the right to say these things with her technique and vision, and what's more I completely believe her.

Flooded fields, all pulling

the same lustrous trick,
that flush in the world's light
as though with sudden love -
how should we live?

These quiet poems are screaming out a plea to look, to change the way the think and act upon the earth. It brings to mind the famous last line of Rilke's poem The Archaic Torso of Apollo: You must change your life.

[Caspar "moved to storygraph" Bryant]

My first Kathleen and glad I'm here it's a collection which I think ought to be read slowly poem to poem, not so much as pauses, but such that each poem ought to be read carefully and deliberately. For the voice. Enjoy her Scots too. Each one deserves the time and no real wrongfooting here but definitely some stronger than others and her work with Hölderlin in this? very nice. It's a nature collection it's the world she romps through but I had to take a photo of Buddleia (the title of which of course reminds me of Will Harris' Buddleia not Buddha yes I know it does exist beyond poetry) which knocked me all the way out

The Buddleia

When I pause to consider
a god, or creation unfolding
in front of my eyes -
is this my lot? Always
brought back to the same
grove of statues in ill-
fitting clothes: my suddenly
elderly parents, their broken-down
Hoover; or my quarrelling kids?

Come evening, it's almost too late
to walk in the garden, and try,
once again, to retire the masculine
God of my youth
by evoking instead the divine
in the lupins, or foxgloves, or self-
seeded buddleia,
whose heavy horns flush as they
open to flower, and draw
these bumbling, well-meaning bees
which remind me again,
of my father ... whom, Christ,
I've forgotten to call.



..

[E.G. Jönsson]

KJ feels at the same time part of a lengthy tradition, as well as having a style uniquely her own. I thoroughly enjoyed looking at the natural and human world through her eyes - peopled by things, animals, plants, but rarely people. Although 'The Buddleia', which do have people in it, is perhaps my favourite poem of the lot. The second stanza is pitch-perfect, and sums up, much better than I could, the reasons why you should read KJ:

Come evening, it's almost too late
to walk in the garden, and try,
once again, to retire the masculine
God of my youth
by evoking instead the divine
in the lupins, or foxgloves, or self-
seeded buddleia,
whose heavy horns flush as they
open to flower, and draw
these bumbling, well-meaning bees
which remind me again,
of my father... whom, Christ,
I've forgotten to call.

[Sydney · Rating 5 out of 5]

Glorious! I happened on one of Jamie's poems on the internet and loved it. Found this volume in Blackwell's in Edinburgh and snapped it up. Have been carrying it around ever since. I fear that Jamie's books may not be easy to find in the US, but make the effort. Read "The Cave of the Fish"! Think about Dante. Start a journey.

[Kirsty · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review to follow.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have enjoyed it - but the poetry in English doesn't slice the world open the way the prose in Sightlines does. There is something about the rhythm and rhyme that is too bland. Looking back over the book I find the poems I really want to read again are mostly in Scots not English where somehow both rhyme and rhythm find a cutting edge - so an extra star for them.

[Tracy Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems say what needs to be said about nature and people without shouting about it. If you can understand what Kathleen Jamie's poems say (and it's not hard to do), you'll understand why we need to preserve our psychological connection to the natural world.

[Tweedledum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kathleen Jamie’s poems in this slim collection really resonated with me sometimes just through a single line or turn of phrase. One that I returned to again and again was “Swallows”. I found myself copying it out and painting a swallow on the page.

[Peter B Waddell · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title poem is just one of several favourites in this anthology. I have savoured it, picked at it, and explored some of its potential compulsively, over and over as it continues to open. Thank you.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of my Scottish poetry books purchases...so far, love it (or as they would say in Scotland, brilliant!)

[Andrea Stoddard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book. Very inspiring and nature filled. I wish I could say I understood every poem.

[Isla (lovednonebutyou) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is utterly gorgeous. The way Jamie describes different experiences and dynamics with nature is fascinating.

[Jim Alexander · Rating 3 out of 5]

The plane shudders, then rolls to a standstill at the far end of the runway. It's not day this light we've entered, but day is present at the negotiation. The sky's the still pale grey of a heron, attending the tide-pools of the shore.

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't say I enjoyed much from this collection. I found most of these disjointed and dull.

[Graham Sillars]

I’m not sure how to rate this.

For me it really didn’t scratch that poetry itch!

That’s not to say I didn’t like it, but I didn’t love it.

[Goodreeds User · Rating 3 out of 5]

A cool and clear stroll through the woods / sea / sky

[Ryan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Without a glossary I can't understand Jamie's poems written in Lowland Scots. Liked 'Water Lilies' and 'Reliquary' best, even though the latter somewhat recalls Ted Hughes' 'Thistle'.

Since there aren't any more memorable lines in the collection, here it is in its entirety.

Reliquary

The land we inhabit opens to reveal
the stain of ancient settlements
plague pits where we'd lay
our fibre-optic cables;

but witness these brittle August
bluebells casting seed,
like tiny hearts in caskets
tossed onto a battle ground.

[Brian Robbins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initially I was disappointed with this book, having read her prose with "Findings". "Alders" reminded me of nothing more in its structure than "Expiring Frog" in "Pickwick Papers".

However, having got over the initial disappointment, there are many really good poems in the volume. A library borrowing that is next on my list to buy.

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short, lovely nature poems set in Scotland, some in dialect.

Jamie's whales,

breach, breathe, and dive
far out in the glare,
like stitches sewn in a rent
almost beyond repair.

and her jellyfish are "vaguely uterine."

[Hanneleele]

Loodusluule.