Interview with Kathleen Jamie

BooksfromScotland.com recently interviewed Kathleen Jamie about how she wrote and researched her collection of essays, Findings.

What period did you write Findings over and is the outdoors something that always interested you - but you came late to? Can you tell us a little about how your interest grew in the outdoors?

I think the first thing to say is that I don't recognise the idea of 'the outdoors', or of 'nature'. WE are 'nature', in our anatomy and mortality. Regarding nature as other, different, an 'outdoors' an 'environment' speaks volumes about our alienation from ourselves. Even plastic is derived from oil, from 'nature'. I'd be sad if Findings were bracketed as a book about 'the outdoors'. It's a book about being human, conscious, implicated. About moving between the indoors and outdoors, the interior (mind and body) and the exterior (world). The book took around 3 years to write, but mixed into it are things I'd been thinking about or noticing for maybe 20 years.

Did you keep a kind of 'nature diary'?

I keep no diary, 'nature' or otherwise. Sometimes I write things down.

You write about the difficulty of just observing, and learning from that, and talk about your previous habit to always look things up in books (which must be common to many of us). It's an interesting process to rely on what one sees. It struck me that as a poet you surely must have found this easier than most?

As to how a poet 'sees' – I have no idea. Best 'seers' I have ever met are naturalists and scientists. What a poet may do with more care and application that some others is use language, and bend the language into the shape of the world. Perhaps poets use language as a form of 'seeing'. More and more, however, I think the job is to listen, to pay attention. I'm not a naturalist, I'd be embarrassed to be called one. As a writer I can provide a sort of connective tissue (that's why I can't accept the distinctions, nature/not-nature; new audience/converted).

From any letters you've received from people who have bought your book, do you think a new audience will discover peregrines and the outdoors, or do you think that you are bringing a new perspective to the converted?

People who've been kind enough to write to me about Findings have said that it refreshed their sense of themselves and their being the world, and maybe articulated things which they recognised couldn't quite find expression for.

You say several 'thank you's' in the acknowledgements to experts and friends who helped you - did you feel stupid at all when you were learning and finding out? The field workers always seem to know which stone to lift etc - what was that process like for you?

Sometimes I felt stupid, hanging out with experts, but it's really, really stupid to be paralysed into inaction and ignorance because we fear being seen as stupid. How dumb is that? One reviewer, a prominent ornithologist, described me as 'an innocent'. That's fine by me, and I've had a lot of laughs - but so often I found the 'experts' willing, more than willing, to share what they know. For me, the business of how I found out was often more interesting than what was found out – more process than result. That's what prevents the essays from being academic. (The word 'essay' had been hi-jacked by academics, and had lost its original meaning in 'try or endeavour'.)

You have a poem that's about to go on the Shanghai underground system. Is that exciting, how did it come about, and were you invited over to see it?

A poem on the Shanghai underground. I suppose I'm obliged to say I'm excited/grateful/moved/thrilled/honoured whatever. But actually I don't much mind. When a poem's done and off my desk, it makes its own way in the world. If my work were totally ignored I'd be debilitated and depressed, possibly fatally. But it's like receiving good news about someone you remember fondly. You think yeah – good, I'm glad you're hanging in there. Don't know how it came about – I received the news through the British Council. And yes, I was invited over, but I'm hearing loud and clear what we're being told about aircraft emissions, and flying to Shanghai for a few days seemed ludicrous. If I was to go, I'd want to go for months. But the same poem's on the New York subway. Funny to think of it going round and round underground in these vastly different places – and both a far cry from Fife.

When you write about a place, you capture it in tiny sketches that convey a complete picture. Does that come very easily to you, or do you feel you need to build up a piece of prose? How does writing prose compare to writing a poem (other than the length, obviously...)

I make a piece of prose as I do a poem. With. Absolute. Meticulous. Care. And. Attention. – I'm thinking about language, sound, rhythm, pace, dynamic, tone, syntax, imagery, imagery again, balance, association, when to let something run, when to do an abrupt turn. Did I mention pace? Assonance, consonance... Rhyme, sometimes in a poem; dialogue, sometimes, in prose. The trick is, of course, to make it look easy. Like figure-skaters do. A 20 year apprenticeship as a poet held me in good stead when it came to writing prose. A prose piece plays itself out across a longer length of time, it has narrative, it doesn't have to function line by line, as a poem does. A different discipline. It's absorbing, and when it's going well, a joy. All writing takes time – much, much more time than you'd think. (Else you're just typing.) I don't believe in 'inspiration'. I beleive in trained instinct.

You have received huge accolades and many sales for Findings, for expertly capturing a world of nature in excellent descriptions. That must have made you feel very pleased, and some kind of justice for a long road, and hard work?

Findings got some lovely reviews and, for a book of essays, has sold well. It certainly won't keep me financially, so the road and the work continue. I'm happy it's been well received, of course, but it's not a matter of 'justice'. It's my practise, my work... it's what I do, but it's good to know that I've done something which resonates with a lot of people.