Kathleen Jamie

Kathleen Jamie (born May 13, 1962) is a Scottish poet, raised in Currie, Edinburgh. She gained an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh.

Her first book was Black Spiders, published 1982 by Salamander Press. Regarded as one of the most gifted contemporary poets in the UK, she won the Forward Poetry Prize for poetry in 2004 for The Tree House. Other books of poetry include The Queen of Sheba, (1994), The Way We Live (1987), Jizzen (1999), A Flame In Your Heart (with Andrew Greig), and The Autonomous Region (with photographer Sean Mayne Smith). Increasingly, her writing has centred on close observation of, and empathy with, the natural world. In 2005 she published, to great critical acclaim, a collection of non-fiction writings, Findings.

She has held several writer-in-residence posts, including one at the University of Dundee from 1991 to 1993. She has contributed to and co-edited a number of anthologies, including The Glory Signs: New Writing Scotland, Vol 16 (1998). She is currently a part-time Lecturer in Creative Writing in the School of English at the University of St. Andrews, and lives in Fife.

Bibliography

Black Spiders 1982
A Flame In Your Heart (with Andrew Greig) 1986
The Way We Live 1987
The Golden Peak: Travels in North Pakistan 1992 (reissued as Among Muslims in 2002)
The Autonomous Region: Poems and Photographs from Tibet 1993
The Queen of Sheba 1994
Jizzen 1999
Mr & Mrs Scotland Are Dead (Poems 1980-94) 2002 (shortlisted for the 2003 International Griffin Poetry Prize)
The Treehouse 2004 (winner of the Forward Poetry Prize)
Findings 2005