For several years now, Kathleen Jamie's work has addressed two principal concerns: how we negotiate with the natural world, and how we should define our conduct within family and society. 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. These often startling encounters with animals, birds, and other humans propose a way of living which recognises the earth as home to many different consciousnesses -- and a means of authentic engagement with 'this, the only world'. Together they form one of the most powerful poetic statements of recent years. Kathleen Jamie, one of the Britain's foremost poets, was born in Scotland in 1962. She has published four collections of poetry and a travel book, Black Spiders (1982), The Way We Live (1987), The Golden Peak: travels in Northern Pakistan (1992), The Queen of Sheba (1994) and Jizzen (published by Picador 1999). She has been awarded the following prizes for her poetry: EC Gregory Award (1982), Somerset Maugham Award (1994), Forward Prize (Best Individual Poem) (1996), Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Individual Artists (1997) and the Geoffrey Faber memorial award twice in 1996 and 2000. She has also been short-listed for the Forward Prize, The McVities Award, and the TS Eliot Award. Kathleen Jamie lives in north Fife, Scotland with her young family.
