Kathleen Jamie
Poet, Essayist
About
Kathleen Jamie is a poet and essayist. She has lived almost all her life on Scotland’s east coast, and engagement with Scotland’s landscapes is an important feature of her work.
She began writing poetry in her teens; an E. C. Gregory award gave early encouragement. Since then she has published several collections, including The Tree House, which won the Forward prize, and The Overhaul, which won the Costa poetry prize. Her most recent collection, The Keeliehawk, is written entirely in Scots.
Kathleen’s essays are collected in three highly regarded books: Findings, Sightlines, and Surfacing, all considered important contributions to the ‘new nature writing’. In 2024 she published Cairn, a hybrid between poetry and prose, ‘a view from the strange here-and-now’.
Nature and environment continue to be important themes in Kathleen’s work. In 2020 she edited Antlers of Water: Writing on the Nature and Environment of Scotland, which brought together eighteen of her fellow writers in one landmark volume.
Her work has been translated into several European languages, and also Korean and Simplified Chinese. She loves radio, and has contributed scripts and radio-poems to BBC Radio 3 and 4. She writes occasional reviews and essays for the London Review of Books, the New Statesman and the Observer.
For a decade Kathleen taught creative writing at the University of St Andrews, before moving to Stirling University, where from 2010–20 she was professor of poetry. From 2021–24 she served as Scotland’s Makar, or national poet. Kathleen’s other interests include archaeology, travel and art.