The Overhaul is Kathleen Jamie's first collection since the award-winning The Tree House, and it broadens her poetic range considerably. The Overhaul continues Jamie's lyric enquiry into the aspects of the world our rushing lives elide, and even threaten. Whether she is addressing birds or rivers, or the need to accept loss, or sometimes, the desire to escape our own lives, her work is earthy and rigorous, her language at once elemental and tender.
As an essayist, she has frequently queried our human presence in the world with the question 'How are we to live?' Here, this is answered more personally than ever. The Overhaul is a mid-life book of repair, restitution, and ultimately hope - of the wisest and most worldly kind.
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(@panmacmillan, 11 October 2012, ebook, 64 pages, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveInc)
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I've read and enjoyed other collections by the poet so was looking forward to The Overhaul. The poems are beautifully written and vivid, full of powerful imagery and ideas. I particularly liked The Gather and Glamourie. The majority of the poems touch on aspects of the natural world. The subject matter left me a little cold and I couldn't always connect with what I read.
