09/01/2019
Scottish poet Jamie (creative writing, Univ. Stirling; Sightlines ), winner of the John Burroughs Medal, has penned a series of essays that combine memoir, archaeology, natural history, and travelog. The principal pieces chronicle her participation in two archaeological digs and a visit to a Tibetan village in China during the time of the Tiananmen Square protests. Her interest in Inuit objects leads her to Quinhagak, AK, where she participates as a volunteer in a dig to uncover Yup'ik artifacts more than 500 years old. The author explores the tundra and the culture of Yup'ik peoples, both past and present. In Westray, one of the Orkney Islands of Scotland, she helps discover villages of Bronze Age and Neolithic farmers while contemplating the past and present-day lives of the people who live there. As a young woman, she explores Xiahe, an ethnically Tibetan town in China, reflecting on the current events the region is experiencing. VERDICT A fascinating, lyrical, wide-ranging work sharing thoughts on past and present that will appeal to a wide range of readers, including those interested in memoirs and reflections on the world around us.—Sue O'Brien, Downers Grove, IL
The best travel writing doesn't take a ham-handed look at the world, nor does it try to escape it. It's simply intended to make you feel so lost that you gaze up in surprise that you're still in your living room. For that, try the splendid Surfacing …[Jamie's] spare prose about life along the 60th parallel evokes the sound, smell and feel of the Alaskan tundra and then, in another essay, the Scottish coast…Jamie's crisp language places you in a near-meditative state. Expect to hear the crunch of gravel, to squint as figures emerge on a nearly blank horizon and to smell the musky air of an enclosure meant to store fish centuries ago.
The New York Times Book Review - Monica Drake
07/08/2019
In a lyrical, beautifully rendered collection of essays, poet Jamie (Sightlines ) meditates on the natural world, lost cultures, and the passage of time. The book’s title relates most directly to its two longest (and most philosophically engaging) pieces, both about archaeological digs. For “In Quinhagak,” Jamie travels to a small Alaskan village to help with collecting artifacts from the period before the arrival of Europeans. Seeing how “the past can spill out of the earth, become the present,” she immerses herself in the way of life of the local Yup’ik, who are deeply knowledgeable about their natural surroundings and acutely present in the moment. In “Links of Noltland,” she visits the Scottish town of Pierowall, where archaeologists are uncovering Neolithic and Bronze Age dwellings, producing information about “ordinary people’s ordinary lives” from millennia ago. Yet, Jamie insists, “those people’s days were as long and vital as ours.” Later, in “The Wind Horse,” Jamie recalls traveling to Tibet in 1989 and hearing fragmentary reports of the Beijing student protests, distressing information that she juxtaposes against the tranquility of a Buddhist monastery. Jamie’s observations about time and the interconnectedness of human lives, past and present, are insightful, and her language elegant. The result is a stirring collection for poetry and prose readers alike. George Lucas, Inkwell Management. (Sept.)
Shortlisted for the 2020 Highland Book Prize Where the Crawdads Sing, “By the Book” in the New York Times Book Review. Splendid… Jamie’s crisp language places you in a near-meditative state.” — Monica Drake, The New York Times Book Review Wall Street Journal The Washington Post Surfacing is rich in connections and observations that grant the reader new ways of seeing …. Jamie excavates long-forgotten memories in some, and then writes of two very different digs in northern lands that are as stark and beautiful as any nature writing but also witty and well-peopled – qualities less typical of the genre.” —Patrick Barkham, The Guardian Surfacing is to travel in the company of a curious and dear friend, equally attuned to the hawk on the horizon as she is to the ground beneath her feet." —Elizabeth Rush, author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore Surfacing , Kathleen Jamie—one of Scotland’s leading poets and an exquisite prose writer—tracks travel observations and reflects on the passage of time. The book is stoked with her precise, often arresting language. [...] It is Jamie’s keen and quiet power of observation and her affection for the big story of the human species that seem to me the most bracing tonic for our contentious times." —Alison Hawthorne Deming, Science Magazine Surfacing there is a poet’s economy with words, a stripped clarity… she shows throughout this astonishing work, it is in looking — attuning ourselves to nature and culture, past and present — that we find our compass." —Barbra Kiser, Nature Magazine "Surfacing is a great companion for autumn’s natural melancholy and meditative feel. Scottish poet Kathleen Jamie weaves together lucid essays about aging, archaeology, travel, and the erosion of natural resources and sacred wild places. She captures that end-of-summer sadness, when you’re taking stock of your year and slowing down as the days get shorter. The book is about changing landscapes and human impact, but it’s also about memory and paying attention, as she visits Ice Age caves and rides on high-speed trains. It’s a series of tight visual scenes, beautifully told, and it’s worth blocking out an afternoon to spend time with." —Outside — Marina Benjamin, author of Insomnia , in the New Statesman Sightlines ) meditates on the natural world, lost cultures, and the passage of time….Jamie’s observations about time and the interconnectedness of human lives, past and present, are insightful, and her language elegant. The result is a stirring collection for poetry and prose readers alike.” —Publishers Weekly Surfacing is a book whose impact is accretive and, eventually, astonishing … It’s wonderful writing, testing the limits of nonfiction." — Alex Preston, The Guardian The Scotsman The Big Issue Praise for Kathleen Jamie: Ways of Seeing and About Looking The Sunday Times (London)
In this marvelous collection of essays, Kathleen Jamie meditates on time, nature, and family with lyrical prose full of wicked wit. Narrator Cathleen McCarron’s performance is a perfect match. Her Scottish accent is appealing, and her timing is akin to musical phrasing that enhances a composer’s intent. For example, Jamie’s description of Alaskan sockeye salmon swimming as “silk slashes in a Tudor sleeve” sounds like “slashies” in McCarron’s lilting voice, and that just adds to the magic of it all. The two longest essays focus on an archaeological discovery in Alaska among the Yupik and another one in the Orkneys. Both highlight the role of warming climates and encroaching seas in the discovery and juxtaposition of history and modernity: One local Yupik resident has an iPhone in one pocket and a traditional ulu knife in the other. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
In this marvelous collection of essays, Kathleen Jamie meditates on time, nature, and family with lyrical prose full of wicked wit. Narrator Cathleen McCarron’s performance is a perfect match. Her Scottish accent is appealing, and her timing is akin to musical phrasing that enhances a composer’s intent. For example, Jamie’s description of Alaskan sockeye salmon swimming as “silk slashes in a Tudor sleeve” sounds like “slashies” in McCarron’s lilting voice, and that just adds to the magic of it all. The two longest essays focus on an archaeological discovery in Alaska among the Yupik and another one in the Orkneys. Both highlight the role of warming climates and encroaching seas in the discovery and juxtaposition of history and modernity: One local Yupik resident has an iPhone in one pocket and a traditional ulu knife in the other. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
2019-08-26
Jamie (Creative Writing/Univ. of Stirling; Selected Poems , 2019, etc.) isn't quite a traditional essayist, but she's a very fine storyteller. Here, she offers her quiet reflections on travels through her native Scotland, Alaska, and elsewhere. The collection opens with "The Reindeer Cave," which finds the author contemplating the Ice Age. "You realize you haven't a clue," she writes. "We can wait, say the hills. Take your time." And she does, reflecting on things as simple as a train journey toward Aberdeen ("A Reflection") or the barren beauty of Alaska ("In Quinhagak") reflected in her observation of an archaeological dig. It can be something as simple as a glimpse of an eagle, soaring in all its majesty, or as sprawling as "The Links of Noltland," a two-part essay that contains such cheeky observations as, "if seals could watch Netflix, they would." Mostly, though, Jamie is observant, reflective, and poignant in her prose. "The Inevitable Pagoda" might as well be a poem in its own right, while the title essay reflects on the voices we all lose to history over time. Even the memory of being bitten by a dog can contain multitudes: "I had my traveling adventure, came home, a quarter century passed. Partners were met and children were born and grew. Friendships were forged and lost. Jobs, projects, homes, bereavements, the stuff of life—if we're spared. The undammed rush of life. If we're spared." Punctuated by photographs and relatable to any human being who feels a connection to nature, Jamie's writing is complex yet modest, reflecting on generations past and future, the nature of time, and what to hang on to as well as what to let go.
A beautiful portrait of a fleeting moment in time on planet Earth.
