| In 2008, Jen Hadfield became the youngest person to win the TS Eliot Prize with her collection Nigh-No-Place. Judge Tobias Hill celebrated her "sheer joy of poetry", while fellow judge Andrew Motion commented: "she is a remarkably
original poet near the beginning of what is obviously going to
be a distinguished career."
Jen Hadfield was born in Cheshire in 1978 to a Canadian mother and British father. She studied English Language and Literature at the University
of Edinburgh and went on to earn an MLitt with distinction from the
Universities of Glasgow and Strathclyde, tutored by Tom Leonard. In 2003 she won an Eric Gregory Award for the then unpublished Almanacs (Bloodaxe 2005). Leonard describes her as: "A quick mind abroad alone in the ever-changing natural landscape. The language country-rooted, specific, of clear observation: a sophisticated, refreshing country brew", and Katy Evans Bush praises poems for having an "atmosphere of being told by campfire in a field overhung with living stars." Hadfield is concerned with capturing the spirit of the Shetlands and of Canada in a celebration of landscape and dialect. As Frances Leviston
notes, "This is a dialect with a global dimension" reminding us that, "Scottish settlers left deep marks on the New World." Jen Hadfield inhabits the music of language and is drawn to liturgy and litany. Her poetry is found where the secular and non-secular converge: 'Paternoster' is the Lord's Prayer as uttered by a draft horse, and one can almost smell the mix of grass and mash on its breath as it repeats the words "it is on earth as it is in heaven". 'Burra Moonwalk' is a prayer where the call of 'the mumbling wind', is met with the response of 'the lapwings tumbling'.
Jen Hadfield is a member of the artist's collective Veer North and her
visual art mirrors her poetry. In 2007 she received a Dewar Award to
research Mexican devotional folk art and to create an exhibition of Shetland
'ex-votos' - devotional miniatures incorporating illustration and 'sacred' text.
In this intimate recording, Jen Hadfield's voice is like a map of all of
the places she has ever called home. The vestiges of the Northwest of
England where she was born, some Canadian vowels picked up from her
Grandmother, and not least the Shetlands, where she now lives, are all
brought to life in these often mesmeric, meant-to-be-heard poems.
Track Listing:
1. Nigh-No-Place
2. Lucky Seven
3. The Blokes and Beasties
4. This is Us Saint's Day
5. Prenatal Polar Bear
6. Chatter
7. Kodachrome
8. The Mandolin of May
9. Thou Shalt Want Want Want
10. Still Life with Longjohns
11. Paternoster
12. Ladies and Gentlemen This is a Horse as Magritte Might Paint Him
13. Burra Moonwalk
14. Twelve Boreal Lyrics
15. Thrimlice-Isbister
16. Our Lady of Isbister
17. "Aa"
18. Love's Dog
19. Self-Portrait as a Fortune-Telling Miracle Fish
20. Ten-minute break haiku
21. Daed-traa
22. Stumba
23. Bridge End, October
24. GIsh
25. Blashey-wadder
26. Glid
27. Summer Migrants
28. Hedgehog, Hamnavoe
29. Some Fool Moon Voices
30. XXI The World
31. Dog-Days
32. Orchid Dog
33. Hey Hey Mr Blue
34. Ghosty's Almanac
35. Melodeon on the Road Home
36. M74 Glasgow to Carlisle
37. Fructidor/September
38. Hooymaand/Hay Month/July
39. Trespass/Saturnalia
40. Lida Aerra/Joytime/June
41. Hen Pheasant
42. Unfledging
43. Odysseus and the Sou'wester
44. The Wren
45. Burra Grace
46. No snow fell on Eden
47. First poem for Owl and Sophie
48. In the Same Way
49. Cabbage
50. Iamb
Total length of the recording: 61.43
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