In the first poem, ‘The Wishing Tree,’ Jamie establishes the beautiful, simple language that characterises this book.

“I stand neither in the wilderness
nor fairyland

but in the fold
of a green hill

the tilt of one parish
into another.”

The poem continues in this vein. Not a word is wasted or extraneous. ‘Frogs’ offers us, initially, a ground-eye view of two mating frogs, before death suddenly claims them in the form of a passing car that smears them into the road. The poem ends on the human perspective. It’s a snapshot of a moment, and is one of the strongest poems in the book.

‘Gloaming’ has wonderfully lyrical lines, and describes the landscape outside as a plane comes into land somewhere in the North, before halting on 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.’

‘White-sided Dolphins’ captures the excitement of people on a boat as a school of dolphins swim alongside, but the moment is there and gone. A brief, fleeting glimpse. ‘Basking Shark’ has a calm, quieter mood, and is also from the human perspective of witnessing something one would not normally see.

‘Daisies’ is one of the best poems in the collection, where the flowers themselves speak with charm and innocence of their pleasant lives, their final words as relevant to humans as the common flowers of the field - that each of us “die never knowing what we miss.” In fact this poem shows a way of living in the world, which is also the theme of the collection. As it says on the book’s jacket:

“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.’

As well as trees, animals and flowers, there are other subjects: ‘Brooch’ addresses the subject of an heirloom, and there’s also a wonderful poem about a cupboard that sometime in the past made its way from an old railway station into the narrator’s house. “How did it sidle / through the racked, / too-narrow door, to hunker / below these sagging rafters, / no doubt for evermore?” ‘Hoard’ speculates on the ancient sacrificial victim in a peat bog, and ‘Reliquary’ too picks up on the intertwining ancient and modern human connections with the land.

“The land we inhabit opens to reveal
the stain of ancient settlements,
plague pits where we’d lay
our fibre-optic cables.”

But perhaps one of the most memorable poems of all is ‘The Creel,’ while ‘The Tree House’ itself is the longest poem in the book, and though in English, utilises the odd word of Scots to speculate on the other lives we might live if we were less rooted in our own circumstances. There are other poems completely in Scots, such as ‘Hame,’ ‘Selchs’ and ‘Speirin.’ Most, though, are in sparse, but lyrical English. There’s perfection in the simplicity of the work. The poems, by and large, are relatively short, unlike many of the poems in Jamie’s 1994 collection, ‘The Queen of Sheba.’ Her new book is more focused, the writing more subtle, condensed. ‘The Tree House’ is a book that addresses its concerns honestly and imaginatively, in a mature, lyrical, but quietly confident tone.

Kara Kellar Bell is a film and media graduate from the West of Scotland, with a passion for European novels, French films, silent cinema, and Brazilian music (everything from Daniela Mercury and other pop stars through to bossa nova). As a writer, she likes to have room to move around creatively, so she’s not located in one genre. She writes realism and also stories of a more fantastic nature, usually grounded to some extent in the real world. She also takes delight in writing across the sexual spectrum, and as a bisexual, considers it important to remind people that things are not always black and white, either/or, in sexuality or in gender. For a selection of Kara’s writing on the Showcase section of this site, click here

© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.