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Orlam
A beautiful and profound narrative poem set in a magic realist version of the West Country by musician and writer PJ Harvey.
Nine-year-old Ira-Abel Rawles lives on Hook Farm in the village of UNDERWHELEM. Next to the farm is Gore Woods, Ira’s sanctuary, overseen by Orlam, the all-seeing lamb’s eyeball who is Ira-Abel’s guardian and protector. Here, drawing on the rituals, children’s songs, chants, and superstitions of the rural West Country of England, Ira-Abel creates the twin realm through which she can make sense of an increasingly confusing and frightening world. Orlam follows Ira and the inhabitants of UNDERWHELEM month by month through the last year of her childhood innocence. The result is a poem-sequence of light and shadow—suffused with hints of violence, sexual confusion and perversion, the oppression of family, but also ecstatic moments in sunlit clearings, song, and bawdy humour.
Orlam is not only a remarkable coming-of-age tale, but the first full-length book written in the Dorset dialect for many decades. Includes a facing-page English translation.
Orlam reveals PJ Harvey as not only one of the most talented songwriters of the age, but a gifted poet—whose formal skill and transforming eye and ear for the lyric line has produced a strange and moving poem like no other.
Nine-year-old Ira-Abel Rawles lives on Hook Farm in the village of UNDERWHELEM. Next to the farm is Gore Woods, Ira’s sanctuary, overseen by Orlam, the all-seeing lamb’s eyeball who is Ira-Abel’s guardian and protector. Here, drawing on the rituals, children’s songs, chants, and superstitions of the rural West Country of England, Ira-Abel creates the twin realm through which she can make sense of an increasingly confusing and frightening world. Orlam follows Ira and the inhabitants of UNDERWHELEM month by month through the last year of her childhood innocence. The result is a poem-sequence of light and shadow—suffused with hints of violence, sexual confusion and perversion, the oppression of family, but also ecstatic moments in sunlit clearings, song, and bawdy humour.
Orlam is not only a remarkable coming-of-age tale, but the first full-length book written in the Dorset dialect for many decades. Includes a facing-page English translation.
Orlam reveals PJ Harvey as not only one of the most talented songwriters of the age, but a gifted poet—whose formal skill and transforming eye and ear for the lyric line has produced a strange and moving poem like no other.
301 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2022
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About the author
P.J. Harvey
6 books97 followersPolly Jean Harvey, MBE (born 9 October 1969), known as PJ Harvey, is an English musician, singer-songwriter, writer, poet, and composer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 81 reviews
December 11, 2022
This remarkable story-in-poems by PJ Harvey is much richer and more earthy than I was ever expecting – something scratched into tree-bark with a rusty nail. You find yourself groping vainly for comparison: it's like a Tom Waits song set in the English countryside, like one of Saki's darker tales told in an old farmer's accent, like Under Milk Wood in the Upside Down, like The Wicker Man meets Riddley Walker.
The setting is a benighted woodland village in Dorset, ‘veiled in vog’ and ‘rank with seepings’, where nine-year-old Ira-Abel Rawles lives in time with the rhythms of the year: sheep shearing, school terms, and the mysterious habits of her family and neighbours. Small actions are ripe with superstitious import, the woods are full of ghosts, Ira feels intimations of her own death, and a dead soldier (who is also Elvis, and perhaps Jesus as well) offers her salvation. And all of it is overseen by the titular Orlam, who is a kind of apotheosised eyeball from a lamb Ira cared for, which died and had its eyes pecked out by crows.
If all this sounds a little abstruse, the language is even more so, since it's all written in Dorset dialect. And sometimes, admittedly, this can look a little alarming:
But abstruseness for its own sake is not the point. In fact, ‘translations’ into standard English are given on facing pages, so she goes out of her way to avoid unnecessary obscurity, and indeed in most poems it's only really a couple of words that need to be double-checked. Instead, the language becomes a way of finding a new material from which to carve out her thoughts and ideas, a way of avoiding cliché and generating gothic new effects.
It allows for some amazing descriptive flourishes as Ira takes in everything from sheep (‘sacrifices / with fleecy faces’) to a hated village boy who's described as a ‘straddle-me-face farter’ who ‘wears ewe's-muff cologne’. Many of the poems, as above, have this kind of driving rhythm to them – like twisted nursery-rhymes – and the influence of song is everywhere, with snatches of gospel lyrics, American folksong, Love Me Tender, and moments of call-and-response:
…And so forth. It all feels like it's happening in some obscure mythic past, yet Harvey anchors it down firmly with references to Curly Wurlys, The Sound of Music, and other concrete details of a 70s/80s childhood (‘We collected bogies in a jam-jar / to melt and mould into a brain, / then rubbed our groins on the carpet / till we got that gone feeling watching Jim'll Fix It’).
Harvey's background as a songwriter is evident at many points (this book has connections to some of her albums, especially I think White Chalk from 2007), not least in the lethal flashes of perfect rhyme and the careful rhythmic control.
But perhaps that kind of thing might be expected from a songwriter producing a book of poetry. What's more surprising is just how good her individual word choices are and how brilliantly she wields language in general, without the comfort of any musical support.
The world in Orlam is never really directly explained in the poems; rather we gradually piece it together as we hear the voices of the characters in the book, inferring their worldview from scattered references, footnotes, scraps of folklore and strange prayers. It's a very brave and artful way of constructing a world, and for those who aren't put off by the initial unfamiliarity, full of rewards. You get dirt under your nails just turning the pages.
The setting is a benighted woodland village in Dorset, ‘veiled in vog’ and ‘rank with seepings’, where nine-year-old Ira-Abel Rawles lives in time with the rhythms of the year: sheep shearing, school terms, and the mysterious habits of her family and neighbours. Small actions are ripe with superstitious import, the woods are full of ghosts, Ira feels intimations of her own death, and a dead soldier (who is also Elvis, and perhaps Jesus as well) offers her salvation. And all of it is overseen by the titular Orlam, who is a kind of apotheosised eyeball from a lamb Ira cared for, which died and had its eyes pecked out by crows.
If all this sounds a little abstruse, the language is even more so, since it's all written in Dorset dialect. And sometimes, admittedly, this can look a little alarming:
Zebm chattermags
healin' a secret:
branten Blaggot,
upright on 'es rudger
ever-ethed in Gore.
But abstruseness for its own sake is not the point. In fact, ‘translations’ into standard English are given on facing pages, so she goes out of her way to avoid unnecessary obscurity, and indeed in most poems it's only really a couple of words that need to be double-checked. Instead, the language becomes a way of finding a new material from which to carve out her thoughts and ideas, a way of avoiding cliché and generating gothic new effects.
Stacy Gale's unborn twin a-latchéd to her left egg-tree
and growed inside till Doctor Doyle made the strange discovery;
a veäre-sized clot with half a face, a single tooth, an' closéd eye,
and one long lock of blatchest hair a'rangled round its tewly thigh.
It allows for some amazing descriptive flourishes as Ira takes in everything from sheep (‘sacrifices / with fleecy faces’) to a hated village boy who's described as a ‘straddle-me-face farter’ who ‘wears ewe's-muff cologne’. Many of the poems, as above, have this kind of driving rhythm to them – like twisted nursery-rhymes – and the influence of song is everywhere, with snatches of gospel lyrics, American folksong, Love Me Tender, and moments of call-and-response:
Who knows his name?
The ghostie John Penne.
Who knows his age?
The ghost Evan Page.
Who knows his kin?
The ghost Eli King.
…And so forth. It all feels like it's happening in some obscure mythic past, yet Harvey anchors it down firmly with references to Curly Wurlys, The Sound of Music, and other concrete details of a 70s/80s childhood (‘We collected bogies in a jam-jar / to melt and mould into a brain, / then rubbed our groins on the carpet / till we got that gone feeling watching Jim'll Fix It’).
Harvey's background as a songwriter is evident at many points (this book has connections to some of her albums, especially I think White Chalk from 2007), not least in the lethal flashes of perfect rhyme and the careful rhythmic control.
Back on the school bus
the farm boys eat bogies
girding me, Orf-gurrel
sheep shimmer, minger.
I scratch in the wilder-mist
INBREDS and DEATHBEDS.
Bad things will happen
to them in the tool sheds.
But perhaps that kind of thing might be expected from a songwriter producing a book of poetry. What's more surprising is just how good her individual word choices are and how brilliantly she wields language in general, without the comfort of any musical support.
The world in Orlam is never really directly explained in the poems; rather we gradually piece it together as we hear the voices of the characters in the book, inferring their worldview from scattered references, footnotes, scraps of folklore and strange prayers. It's a very brave and artful way of constructing a world, and for those who aren't put off by the initial unfamiliarity, full of rewards. You get dirt under your nails just turning the pages.
August 9, 2023
First thing to say is that the book itself is a thing of beauty. The hardback cloth bound edition with its striking cover art, the thick pages and the illustrations inside make Orlam a visual and tactile experience as well as a literary one.
The poems follow month-by-month a year on a farm in an imaginary Village in the West Country. This is not the idealised picture of farm life I had when as a kid I wanted nothing more than to be a farmer’s wife bottle feeding lambs and petting the cows with my faithful sheepdog at my heels. This is farm life in the raw. An existence where lambs die and are pecked at by crows, where the dog is sly and untrustworthy and fathers are angry.
Mixed in with the harsh realities is the supernatural, the ghost of a soldier who inhabits the woods, folklore and proverbs passed down through the generations – never eat a blackberry past September apparently. This interconnectedness with the land, the cycle of the seasons, the coming of age of the farm’s daughter all create a heady atmosphere of a pagan, almost wiccan, existence – although this is complicated by Ira projecting a Christ-like persona onto her ghost soldier. It is set firmly in it’s location – West Country/Dorset – but its time is more ambiguous. It is written in the dialect of the area which makes it a challenging though mesmerising read (every poem is faced with its translation so one is never lost as to meaning).
Mesmerising is the word for this collection. I read it in a couple of sittings, being almost hypnotised by the language, the rhythm of the words congruent with the rhythm of the months. It is a startlingly good debut that will draw you in and hold you suspended in Underwhelm until the final page.
The poems follow month-by-month a year on a farm in an imaginary Village in the West Country. This is not the idealised picture of farm life I had when as a kid I wanted nothing more than to be a farmer’s wife bottle feeding lambs and petting the cows with my faithful sheepdog at my heels. This is farm life in the raw. An existence where lambs die and are pecked at by crows, where the dog is sly and untrustworthy and fathers are angry.
Mixed in with the harsh realities is the supernatural, the ghost of a soldier who inhabits the woods, folklore and proverbs passed down through the generations – never eat a blackberry past September apparently. This interconnectedness with the land, the cycle of the seasons, the coming of age of the farm’s daughter all create a heady atmosphere of a pagan, almost wiccan, existence – although this is complicated by Ira projecting a Christ-like persona onto her ghost soldier. It is set firmly in it’s location – West Country/Dorset – but its time is more ambiguous. It is written in the dialect of the area which makes it a challenging though mesmerising read (every poem is faced with its translation so one is never lost as to meaning).
Mesmerising is the word for this collection. I read it in a couple of sittings, being almost hypnotised by the language, the rhythm of the words congruent with the rhythm of the months. It is a startlingly good debut that will draw you in and hold you suspended in Underwhelm until the final page.
May 16, 2022
I'm tempted to go the full 5, partly because it's so good in its own right, partly because this is a side of PJH we've only glimpsed before, especially on albums like White Chalk and Dance Hall at Louse Point; the writer who draws a line from goth to actual old things, who can capture the inner life of a girl in a world where - thanks in no small part to the dialect which I'm told is broad - it's the 1970s and the 1600s and the 600s all at once, where time moves like the growth of an oak or ash tree; glacially slow, but ever-shifting. A PJ Harvey who owes as much to CS Lewis and Fairport Convention as to Howlin' Wolf and Pixies.
To some extent, I'm a little bothered by the bilinguality of the book; I understand the wish to write in pure dialect, but other authors have done that without having to spell it out in RP and footnotes and glossary, and it feels a tiny bit hand-holdy. At the same time, there's something to the way she occasionally needs to change the story just a tiny bit to say the same in English that Ira can think so easily in Dorzet - the rhymes need to change, the animals and plants need to lose some of their magic. It's part of the dying of childhood.
Once or twice I'm reminded of her old beau's And the Ass Saw the Angel; the heavy dialect, the brutality of adolescence, the ensouling of the world; but this is a far more mature, controlled work, without ever losing the perspective of the child telling it.
I'm really looking forward to new music from her now.
To some extent, I'm a little bothered by the bilinguality of the book; I understand the wish to write in pure dialect, but other authors have done that without having to spell it out in RP and footnotes and glossary, and it feels a tiny bit hand-holdy. At the same time, there's something to the way she occasionally needs to change the story just a tiny bit to say the same in English that Ira can think so easily in Dorzet - the rhymes need to change, the animals and plants need to lose some of their magic. It's part of the dying of childhood.
Once or twice I'm reminded of her old beau's And the Ass Saw the Angel; the heavy dialect, the brutality of adolescence, the ensouling of the world; but this is a far more mature, controlled work, without ever losing the perspective of the child telling it.
I'm really looking forward to new music from her now.
April 30, 2022
It definitely needs a lot more footnotes than the ones already included, as it's a bit inaccessible hiding behind language and metaphor. At the same time the glimpses of reality we get are enough to form a gruesome but powerful story. Adding to that comes the fact that it's the first book written entirely in the Dorset dialect in decades which alongside Polly's name are the biggest selling points. I knew I was reading something important even though I wasn't able to understand everything!
October 31, 2022
This was a very appropriate book of poetry to read during spooky season. (No thanks to Kindle--if you read this book, make sure you get the print version, as the Kindle version shows up in tiny print that you can't resize due to some fancy font shit of the publisher's.) Imagine the show Over the Garden Wall, except rated R due to sexual abuse, sheep-fucking, drunk deadbeat dads, and a sexy dead Elvis. This reminded me of the best and most guttural songs of PJ Harvey's early albums, with moments of beauty sparkling through the hoary, scary swamp of rage. The Dorset dialect is certainly interesting, but I plan to return to the straight English poems again come next Halloween. The death of childhood was never so furious and so beautiful.
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May 17, 2023Why I read this:
I'm a long time P J Harvey fan and was curious to read her poetry.
My Impression:
This is a stunning and divisive piece of literature that is difficult to rate. I was captivated by Harvey's use of language, the uniqueness of it, the imagery and rhythm. At that level, I admire Orlam. But in terms of the subject matter, it was so sickening and vile that I cannot say I enjoyed it. Despite the spell that Harvey's words cast over the reader, we are nonetheless immersed in a community as foul as a fly-blown corpse (paedophelia, rape, bestiality, mutant births, cruelty and disease) and there is little sweet air to refresh the senses. In the end I did not feel anything cathartic enough to justify a sojourn through hell.
That said, lovers of language, and fans of folk horror will find Orlam a rare treasure. The way Harvey works with dialect, nursery rhyme, scripture, folklore and song is alchemical.
"Stacy Gale's unborn twin a-latchéd to her left egg-tree
and growed inside till Doctor Doyle made the strange discovery;
a veare-sized clot with half a face, a single tooth, an' closéd eye,
and one long lock of blatchest hair a'rangled round its tewly thigh."
Harvey's music has always pushed the limits but I was honestly surprised at the darkness of Orlam. A sickly and haunted kind of poetry.
Craft-Related Notes:
-Harvey's words have a sordid, evil tang and the resonance of witchcraft. Compelling and uncanny. The inverted nursery rhyme, inversions of adult and child, life and death, a dirty sickness inherent in the natural world.
-Reminded me of: And the Ass Saw the Angel - Nick Cave, Among These Animals - Gaynor Jones, Water Shall Refuse Them - Lucie McKnight-Hardie, and Big Black (the band).
I'm a long time P J Harvey fan and was curious to read her poetry.
My Impression:
This is a stunning and divisive piece of literature that is difficult to rate. I was captivated by Harvey's use of language, the uniqueness of it, the imagery and rhythm. At that level, I admire Orlam. But in terms of the subject matter, it was so sickening and vile that I cannot say I enjoyed it. Despite the spell that Harvey's words cast over the reader, we are nonetheless immersed in a community as foul as a fly-blown corpse (paedophelia, rape, bestiality, mutant births, cruelty and disease) and there is little sweet air to refresh the senses. In the end I did not feel anything cathartic enough to justify a sojourn through hell.
That said, lovers of language, and fans of folk horror will find Orlam a rare treasure. The way Harvey works with dialect, nursery rhyme, scripture, folklore and song is alchemical.
"Stacy Gale's unborn twin a-latchéd to her left egg-tree
and growed inside till Doctor Doyle made the strange discovery;
a veare-sized clot with half a face, a single tooth, an' closéd eye,
and one long lock of blatchest hair a'rangled round its tewly thigh."
Harvey's music has always pushed the limits but I was honestly surprised at the darkness of Orlam. A sickly and haunted kind of poetry.
Craft-Related Notes:
-Harvey's words have a sordid, evil tang and the resonance of witchcraft. Compelling and uncanny. The inverted nursery rhyme, inversions of adult and child, life and death, a dirty sickness inherent in the natural world.
-Reminded me of: And the Ass Saw the Angel - Nick Cave, Among These Animals - Gaynor Jones, Water Shall Refuse Them - Lucie McKnight-Hardie, and Big Black (the band).
June 15, 2022
And maybe that might get to a three if i reread it. This was my second go at Orlam. I looked at my daughter's copy and didn't much like it, then was given one as a birthday present, so I read it all and worked quite hard. The poetry itself is very variable, some short rhyming verses, some free, and much between. It changes from page to page, which can be fine in an anthology, but when you're reading what is billed as a long narrative poem I need some ongoing sense of rhythm.
Dorset dialect? Well maybe. I've worked with Dorset farmers and some of it was good, but some I thought just wrong.
And of course the theme. Grim! A 9 year-old girl with a drunk father, an older brother who leaves her for an imaginary friend, a mother? I'm not sure, but I think she killed herself before the story started. An sex obsession with all of them, including the 9 year-old.
All of which may possibly have been the case in an isolated village in 1970s Dorset, but if so, I needed much better poetry to carry me through.
I'm afraid I think that if this hadn't been written by PJ Harvey it wouldn't have been published.
Sorry!
Dorset dialect? Well maybe. I've worked with Dorset farmers and some of it was good, but some I thought just wrong.
And of course the theme. Grim! A 9 year-old girl with a drunk father, an older brother who leaves her for an imaginary friend, a mother? I'm not sure, but I think she killed herself before the story started. An sex obsession with all of them, including the 9 year-old.
All of which may possibly have been the case in an isolated village in 1970s Dorset, but if so, I needed much better poetry to carry me through.
I'm afraid I think that if this hadn't been written by PJ Harvey it wouldn't have been published.
Sorry!
June 1, 2022
Whatever the technical merit, whatever the story telling, whoever the author is, the most important feeling at the close of a piece of writing is grief – grief at leaving the company of the characters, grief at the sudden absence of the narrator’s voice, grief at the end of the protagonist’s challenge to our own settled pleasant valley Sunday view of the world.
Orlam is an accomplished poem, a fusing of faerie with the threat of the real-world horrors such as Dogwell’s house, the place where the babysat children of Underwhelem pray ‘the dread door does not open.’ The story is told through the eyes of Ira, a young girl on the cusp of adolescence, a young ‘gurrel’ full of rage, curiosity, and longing. The yearning for completeness, for an absent half, is present throughout the book – an absent mother, a brother who prefers the company of his imaginary twin to his sister, Stacy Gales’ unborn twin, Ira’s longing for Wyman Elvis.
Orlam is written in a Dorset dialect that illustrates the ancient Germanic roots within: Vs and Ws switched, ds and ths consonant swapped, zebm instead of seven, the play on the word ‘farter’ for Ira’s ‘loathsome tonight’ father. The poem is beautiful, grim, provocative, with language that reflects the kindness and cruelty of nature, and a nine-year old female Beowulf whose Grendel is her own sheep-farmer sire. Ira escapes into the woods. Scattered amongst the roots of timeless Gore Woods are Safeway carrier bags, 1970’s confectionery brands, used condoms.
An evocative sense of place is at the heart of great writing. In many ways, Gore Woods is the central character of the book, the close-packed trees as the entry point of fear, adventure, self-discovery, death. Ira’s Hundred Acre Wood is haunted by rage, loss, the spectre of abuse, burgeoning sexuality. As well as the no-time world of Gore Woods, Harvey gives us the village of Underwhelem, the claustrophobic agricultural hamlet where resentments simmer, where secrets are hidden, where men drink to forget inside the Golden Fleece inn.
Harvey avoids W.B. Yeat’s whimsical escape into a rural fantasy of yesteryear. Orlam instead evokes the yearning of Patrick Kavanagh’s The Great Hunger – of a place that is loved and hated in equal measure, a place that inspires and imprisons, the lustful longing for a life partner. Whilst Kavanagh’s sexually frustrated Patrick Maguire masturbates over the embers of a dying fire, Harvey writes ‘Where the bee sucks there fuck I.’
Orlam evokes existential dread, that the ‘hag -ridden hollow’ of Underwhelem of ‘Jeyes Fluid, slurry, zweat and pus, anus grease, squitters, jizz and blood,’ is what defines life. The sense of despair of the human soul caught in the no-time of a sentient landscape reminds me of Alan Garner’s Cheshire dialect books… Thursbitch, in particular.
I felt grief at the close of Orlam.
The wild magic of Gore Woods awaits.
I am anxious to return.
Orlam is an accomplished poem, a fusing of faerie with the threat of the real-world horrors such as Dogwell’s house, the place where the babysat children of Underwhelem pray ‘the dread door does not open.’ The story is told through the eyes of Ira, a young girl on the cusp of adolescence, a young ‘gurrel’ full of rage, curiosity, and longing. The yearning for completeness, for an absent half, is present throughout the book – an absent mother, a brother who prefers the company of his imaginary twin to his sister, Stacy Gales’ unborn twin, Ira’s longing for Wyman Elvis.
Orlam is written in a Dorset dialect that illustrates the ancient Germanic roots within: Vs and Ws switched, ds and ths consonant swapped, zebm instead of seven, the play on the word ‘farter’ for Ira’s ‘loathsome tonight’ father. The poem is beautiful, grim, provocative, with language that reflects the kindness and cruelty of nature, and a nine-year old female Beowulf whose Grendel is her own sheep-farmer sire. Ira escapes into the woods. Scattered amongst the roots of timeless Gore Woods are Safeway carrier bags, 1970’s confectionery brands, used condoms.
An evocative sense of place is at the heart of great writing. In many ways, Gore Woods is the central character of the book, the close-packed trees as the entry point of fear, adventure, self-discovery, death. Ira’s Hundred Acre Wood is haunted by rage, loss, the spectre of abuse, burgeoning sexuality. As well as the no-time world of Gore Woods, Harvey gives us the village of Underwhelem, the claustrophobic agricultural hamlet where resentments simmer, where secrets are hidden, where men drink to forget inside the Golden Fleece inn.
Harvey avoids W.B. Yeat’s whimsical escape into a rural fantasy of yesteryear. Orlam instead evokes the yearning of Patrick Kavanagh’s The Great Hunger – of a place that is loved and hated in equal measure, a place that inspires and imprisons, the lustful longing for a life partner. Whilst Kavanagh’s sexually frustrated Patrick Maguire masturbates over the embers of a dying fire, Harvey writes ‘Where the bee sucks there fuck I.’
Orlam evokes existential dread, that the ‘hag -ridden hollow’ of Underwhelem of ‘Jeyes Fluid, slurry, zweat and pus, anus grease, squitters, jizz and blood,’ is what defines life. The sense of despair of the human soul caught in the no-time of a sentient landscape reminds me of Alan Garner’s Cheshire dialect books… Thursbitch, in particular.
I felt grief at the close of Orlam.
The wild magic of Gore Woods awaits.
I am anxious to return.
April 30, 2022
Reviving the Dorset dialect and West Country folklore through narrative verse, PJ Harvey’s ‘Orlam’ is a sequence of poems around one girl’s coming of age.
The book is presented in dual-dialect format, with Standard English on the left-hand page and Dorset dialect on the right.
As stated in the ‘Note on the Text’, the book is a work of the imagination. Nine-year-old Ira-Abel and her rural community seem to exist in a timewarp, in which signs of modernity appear alongside superstitious beliefs and practices of the past.
The name of the village, ‘UNDERWHELEM’, seems at first to have been chosen at random. But Harvey clearly knows her etymology; the placename fits the mood of the book, which might be summed up as ‘a journey through the psychic undergrowth’.
The book is presented in dual-dialect format, with Standard English on the left-hand page and Dorset dialect on the right.
As stated in the ‘Note on the Text’, the book is a work of the imagination. Nine-year-old Ira-Abel and her rural community seem to exist in a timewarp, in which signs of modernity appear alongside superstitious beliefs and practices of the past.
The name of the village, ‘UNDERWHELEM’, seems at first to have been chosen at random. But Harvey clearly knows her etymology; the placename fits the mood of the book, which might be summed up as ‘a journey through the psychic undergrowth’.
September 14, 2022
Reading this took me back to studying literature at school and having to find meanings and themes in the writing. It's interesting and certainly not an easy read. Definitely one to go back to (probably more than once) and I'm sure that more will be revealed with each read.
December 23, 2023
I came into this with love for PJ’s writing. I think that carried me through in a lot of ways. Her world was so rich and interesting and her prose was fantastic as always. Plot wise I wasn’t in love with this. It felt a little shock value-y (similar to Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh) and directionless at times. Unsure how I feel coming out of this.
November 19, 2022
Reflections and lessons learned:
“Hear the grinding wheel-bird grieve.
Grief unknits my ravelled sleeve.
Death of zummer, death of play, Waxing night and dwindling day.
Help me dunnick, drush and dove.
Love Me Tender. Tender love.”
As a child we often holidayed in Cornwall, but outside of those wonderful memories, I’m afraid that I have always adopted the z instead of the s in a slightly mocking way. Could it be true that they did only adopt electricity in 1993? So cruel… So my heart really did sink when I realised that this was written in original Cornish dialect - I nearly walked away, but having the glossary in the back meant that I at least had back up if I did decide to persevere with what I expected to be a difficult text - this would be a bit pretentious but maybe it was worth a try…?
I did struggle in places as expected, but the side by side page translations, the faded and bold text colours, the footnotes, and the glossary all really did make this a very different experience, which fit the tone and delivery of the poetry. It felt like Harvey lyrics - strong, sultry, uncomfortable in places. Who was the Elvis style character? I think that I’d only rate the poetry as a 3/5, but the whole experience felt simultaneously sumptuous and educational - I enjoyed this much more than I expected and am glad that I wasn’t able to be put off in the bookshop
“Hear the grinding wheel-bird grieve.
Grief unknits my ravelled sleeve.
Death of zummer, death of play, Waxing night and dwindling day.
Help me dunnick, drush and dove.
Love Me Tender. Tender love.”
As a child we often holidayed in Cornwall, but outside of those wonderful memories, I’m afraid that I have always adopted the z instead of the s in a slightly mocking way. Could it be true that they did only adopt electricity in 1993? So cruel… So my heart really did sink when I realised that this was written in original Cornish dialect - I nearly walked away, but having the glossary in the back meant that I at least had back up if I did decide to persevere with what I expected to be a difficult text - this would be a bit pretentious but maybe it was worth a try…?
I did struggle in places as expected, but the side by side page translations, the faded and bold text colours, the footnotes, and the glossary all really did make this a very different experience, which fit the tone and delivery of the poetry. It felt like Harvey lyrics - strong, sultry, uncomfortable in places. Who was the Elvis style character? I think that I’d only rate the poetry as a 3/5, but the whole experience felt simultaneously sumptuous and educational - I enjoyed this much more than I expected and am glad that I wasn’t able to be put off in the bookshop
May 27, 2025
Just finished my diss 😮💨 what a rich world to study
January 14, 2023
First five-star read of the year! I have a lot of thoughts about this that I'll try and make sense of:
-PJ HARVEY. If anyone's going to pull off something as creative and ambitious as this, it's her. I haven't read any of her books before but I adore her music and this format of story-through-poems really works with her style.
- It's a dark, gory and sometimes brutal read, but it's also magically gothic and completely unique.
-It's a linguistic dream, with each poem printed in standard English and in the Dorset dialect. The standard English versions appear in lighter or darker font depending on the density of the dialect. As you move through it, you get to know the Dorset dialect (if you aren't already familiar) and you depend less on the English print. There's also a glossary of terms at the end and footnotes throughout.
I read this quite slowly as I wanted to understand each poem in standard English but also appreciate the Dorset dialect. Now that I'm more familiar with the language, I'm going to go through it all once more before it goes back on the shelf. If you're a PJ Harvey fan, you need to read this.
-PJ HARVEY. If anyone's going to pull off something as creative and ambitious as this, it's her. I haven't read any of her books before but I adore her music and this format of story-through-poems really works with her style.
- It's a dark, gory and sometimes brutal read, but it's also magically gothic and completely unique.
-It's a linguistic dream, with each poem printed in standard English and in the Dorset dialect. The standard English versions appear in lighter or darker font depending on the density of the dialect. As you move through it, you get to know the Dorset dialect (if you aren't already familiar) and you depend less on the English print. There's also a glossary of terms at the end and footnotes throughout.
I read this quite slowly as I wanted to understand each poem in standard English but also appreciate the Dorset dialect. Now that I'm more familiar with the language, I'm going to go through it all once more before it goes back on the shelf. If you're a PJ Harvey fan, you need to read this.
October 30, 2024
So good. Incredibly atmospheric, gothic poetry: you can almost feel the grime, loam, and fog (vog) seeping off the pages. Conveys a deep sense of place you can get fully immersed in, heightened by the unfamiliar mouthfeel and sounds of the Dorset (Darzet) dialect. Like the lyrical content of several of her songs (particularly from the earlier albums), very disturbing...content warnings include child abuse and pedophilia.
This is folk horror adjacent, if not fully there. Surely one of the darkest fairy (veäry) tales since Pan's Labyrinth. A good choice for October.
"Elms unveiled in secret places
a thousand soonere-children's faces
and drisk enshrouded in its cloak
holway, river, brook and oak,
and all souls under Orlam's reign
made passage for the born again"
This is folk horror adjacent, if not fully there. Surely one of the darkest fairy (veäry) tales since Pan's Labyrinth. A good choice for October.
"Elms unveiled in secret places
a thousand soonere-children's faces
and drisk enshrouded in its cloak
holway, river, brook and oak,
and all souls under Orlam's reign
made passage for the born again"
November 11, 2022
I have no idea what happened - but I loved it. Beautifully designed and delivered.
January 9, 2023
bible
December 30, 2022
det här var ljuvt på många sätt. fin skitig poesi på engelska mystiska landsbygden. skriven på dorset-dialekt och med översättning bredvid!
och ja, om någon skulle undra precis hur mycket jag tycker om pj harvey så kan man säga som så att jag har sedan jag var 14 år tänkt att jag ska döpa min förstfödda till polly jean (nu blev det ju inte så, men ändå).
och ja, om någon skulle undra precis hur mycket jag tycker om pj harvey så kan man säga som så att jag har sedan jag var 14 år tänkt att jag ska döpa min förstfödda till polly jean (nu blev det ju inte så, men ändå).
January 20, 2025
I will say the atmosphere is consistently there, and if not for my lack of being able to follow the narrative in poetic form for the most part, I could see myself loving this. The movie 'The VVitch' kept popping in my head while reading, though this is as perverse as the movie is religious.
This has me wanting to revisit PJ's last album, as I would like to see the connections to this story.
This has me wanting to revisit PJ's last album, as I would like to see the connections to this story.
January 17, 2023
óræð en undurfögur ljóðsaga. ég þurfti verulega að hnykla enskuvöðvana (erfið enska - not for the faint of heart), ég þyrfti helst á fleiri footnotes og útskýringum að halda
May 9, 2024
pj harvey is simply one of the greatest gifts to mankind. her art never ceases to amaze, whether that be her music, poetry or drawings, everything is absolutely stellar. ‘Orlam’ is every single aspect of her talents combined into one!
just as a standalone text this is absolutely brilliant in every sense of the word. completely enchanting and enthralling from front to back! an entire world built up within incredible poetry that uses old Dorset language, folklore etc. to make a really unique and engaging narrative surrounding the coming-of-age of Ira-Abel Rawles. it’s a real mix of staggering beauty, pain & disgust as the search for love and guidance proceeds throughout. incredibly touching, incredibly funny, incredibly hearty. many more emotions can be extracted and felt. going into this completely blind would be a complete joy..
..however my first introduction to the world of Orlam actually came from ‘I Inside The Old Year Dying’, the sister-album birthed from the ideas & story of this book which released after. i wondered if this would of somewhat been an issue, somewhat spoiling my appreciation but if anything it just made me fall in love with the text more. being able to not just read but hear the text aloud, its rhythm and melodies was such an incredible experience!
just as a standalone text this is absolutely brilliant in every sense of the word. completely enchanting and enthralling from front to back! an entire world built up within incredible poetry that uses old Dorset language, folklore etc. to make a really unique and engaging narrative surrounding the coming-of-age of Ira-Abel Rawles. it’s a real mix of staggering beauty, pain & disgust as the search for love and guidance proceeds throughout. incredibly touching, incredibly funny, incredibly hearty. many more emotions can be extracted and felt. going into this completely blind would be a complete joy..
..however my first introduction to the world of Orlam actually came from ‘I Inside The Old Year Dying’, the sister-album birthed from the ideas & story of this book which released after. i wondered if this would of somewhat been an issue, somewhat spoiling my appreciation but if anything it just made me fall in love with the text more. being able to not just read but hear the text aloud, its rhythm and melodies was such an incredible experience!
April 9, 2024
The first night after I started to read this I was visited by a chattermag who told me if I helped it to collect enough twiddicks for its nest then I would enjoy a sound night's sleep. It lied.
This long, narative poem recalls the England of Masefield, Cooper and Garner; a world of frost and hard choices, of sunlit glades and shaded love, of seasons turning and everything but nothing changing.
Read through once as a linear narrative poem, I suspect that I shall revisit this book on many occasions in a less linear way.
This long, narative poem recalls the England of Masefield, Cooper and Garner; a world of frost and hard choices, of sunlit glades and shaded love, of seasons turning and everything but nothing changing.
Read through once as a linear narrative poem, I suspect that I shall revisit this book on many occasions in a less linear way.
June 8, 2022
I'm not really one for English language poetry but I do love PJ Harvey and this sounded interesting and different enough that I would try it. It was interesting, I'm not sure if enjoyable is the right word as there was a lot of death and child abuse. But I'm glad I did get it and read it.
September 16, 2024
As beautiful and magical as I expected. I listened to the album at the same time and I enjoyed that a lot <3
November 15, 2024
Love the idea and it has moments but did not come together to me. Remained fragmented, but powerful, images that were too obscure to fully connect. Maybe I was just in the wrong mindset
November 13, 2022
I have to begin by saying I’m not a big reader of poetry, so this was somewhat of a baptism of fire I felt drawn to by the power of the author’s work in other fields. Once I got my head around it and began picking up the words and cadences of the Dorset dialect, I found myself at times very moved. Grimy, grotty, and with a fascination with the cycles of the natural world, it bordered on folk horror at times but constantly impinged by hinted-at real world horrors. There are some vivid, gruesome descriptions of death and decay peppered throughout, alongside a keen eye for how seasons shape a landscape and the lives of that which inhabit it. A compellingly constructed world of the mind and memorable coming of age tale. PJ Harvey seems to have the hang of this poetry thing, to my untrained eye.
September 20, 2025
Euh…..5 sterren omdat deze dichtbundel geschreven is door PJ Harvey, mijn held. Geschreven in het Engels, Engels lezen is niet mijn sterkste kant. Dus helemaal eerlijk is de beoordeling niet. Wat ik ervan opgepikt heb is mooi, poëtisch en uiteindelijk heel gruwelijk. Detail de gedichten staan op de linkerkant in Engels en op de rechterkant in dialect Dorset. Daar kan ik al helemaal geen tauw aan vastknopen. En met prachtige tekeningen van onze PJ. Als je het Engels lezen goed beheerst en van gedichten houdt dan is dit boek zeker een aanrader.
January 3, 2023
3 & 1/2 Stars. Singer/songwriter Polly Harvey ventures into the wilds of narrative verse with this magical realist coming-of-age poem cycle. Harvey's language is unsurprisingly musical, using Dorset dialect, and drawing on folk tales, the gothic, and Celtic myth for her dreamy, earthy tale of young womanhood, the darkness and light in people, and the mysteries of nature. Fans of Max Porter and Anne Carson take note.
June 7, 2024
Een verhaal in de vorm van losse gedichten vol herinneringen aan een jeugd op het Britse platteland en doorspekt met volksverhalen en bijgeloof. Vaak heel sfeervol, maar vaak ook moeilijk te doorgronden en repetitief. Een leuke bezigheid tijdens het lezen was het vergelijken van de gedichten die op de linkerpagina in standaard Engels zijn afgedrukt en op de rechter in het dialect van Dorset, de streek waar Polly opgegroeid is.
January 23, 2023
interesting poem or collection of poems, told in a rural English dialect and seeming to revolve around that communities traditions, superstitions and farming life
rough and jarring at times
rough and jarring at times
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