The Keelie Hawk

Book excerpt: 'Jamie’s poetry offers a new way of seeing the world and a new form of intelligence about ourselves and other species' – Kit Fan, Guardian The Keelie Hawk is a landmark poetry collection from Kathleen Jamie, the current Makar (National Poet) of Scotland. For the first time, Kathleen Jamie has brought her astonishing lyric talent to the language of her homeland, with outstanding results. The Keelie Hawk is a deeply resonant collection written in Scots, with each poem accompanied by a translation into English. Its publication is a significant event in Scottish literature, not only a reclaiming by one of our finest poets of the mouth-music of literary Scots, but a furthering of that language: ‘by making poems, a language develops’, Jamie observes in a fascinating afterword.