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A review by aikematilde
Antlers of Water: Writing on the Nature and Environment of Scotland by Kathleen Jamie
5.0
Saw this collection at a bookshop in Utrecht last week and couldn't leave it behind. Read it breathlessly since Friday and what a treat! I underlined (lots), reminisced, looked up on the map and imagined.
Kathleen Jamie, the editor of this anthology, writes that “.. what makes our nature writing ‘new’, is our increasing awareness of the unfolding ecological crisis.” The book celebrates beautiful places in Scotland but pays as much attention to the environment, to politics, the climate crisis. Prose, poetry, essay, photography and poetic nonfiction take you wild swimming, to a wind farm in a moor, into deep time, on walks that don’t happen, among the stags, out to the islands. The incredible beauty is in the language, the emotional connection to the land, the gorgeous minuscule observations, the recognition of a shared experience.
From ‘.. the tender pannacotta of the mudflats’ (140) and the ‘fields and forests [that] cascaded in slow, geological waves down to the shore’ (40) to swimming inside a cloud (269), I love writing like this & I love Scotland.
Kathleen Jamie, the editor of this anthology, writes that “.. what makes our nature writing ‘new’, is our increasing awareness of the unfolding ecological crisis.” The book celebrates beautiful places in Scotland but pays as much attention to the environment, to politics, the climate crisis. Prose, poetry, essay, photography and poetic nonfiction take you wild swimming, to a wind farm in a moor, into deep time, on walks that don’t happen, among the stags, out to the islands. The incredible beauty is in the language, the emotional connection to the land, the gorgeous minuscule observations, the recognition of a shared experience.
From ‘.. the tender pannacotta of the mudflats’ (140) and the ‘fields and forests [that] cascaded in slow, geological waves down to the shore’ (40) to swimming inside a cloud (269), I love writing like this & I love Scotland.