Author Guide · Poetry & Essays
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Kathleen Jamie won her first poetry award, the Eric Gregory, at nineteen, and published her first collection, Black Spiders, in 1982 while still a philosophy student at the University of Edinburgh. Since then she has travelled in northern Pakistan and Tibet, watched peregrines nest above her home in Fife, sat in on an autopsy in Dundee and dug at a five-hundred-year-old Yup’ik village in Alaska, and written about all of it, in poems and in essays. From 2021 to 2024 she was Scotland’s Makar, the national poet, the fourth since the post was created. This guide covers her 12 key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1982–2024 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Kathleen Jamie has published about twenty books of poetry and prose. Her best known are the poetry collections The Tree House (2004), which won the Forward Prize, and The Overhaul (2012), and the essay collections Findings (2005), Sightlines (2012) and Surfacing (2019). Start with Findings; below you will find all twelve key books in order, the prizes each one won, and a reading path through the poetry.
Where to Start with Kathleen Jamie
If you want her essays at their most direct
→ Findings (2005) — peregrines, Orkney at midwinter and a whale on a Hebridean beach.
If you want her defining poetry collection
→ The Tree House (2004) — the 2004 book that won the Forward Prize.
If you want archaeology and climate
→ Surfacing (2019) — a dig in Alaska threatened by melting permafrost.
If you want her most recent work
→ Cairn (2024) — short pieces on a changing landscape.
12 Kathleen Jamie Books, in Order
Black Spiders
Her first collection, published when she was twenty and still studying philosophy at Edinburgh, a year after she won the Eric Gregory Award for young poets.
The Way We Live
Her second solo collection, published by Bloodaxe five years after her debut, gathering the poems of her mid-twenties.
The Golden Peak
An account of her travels in the mountains of northern Pakistan and the people she met there. It was revised and reissued in 2002 as Among Muslims.
The Queen of Sheba
The collection the British Council calls the point where she “really hit her stride as a poet”. Edwin Morgan called its title poem, which brings the Queen of Sheba to Scotland, “splendidly boisterous”. It won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1995.
Jizzen
The title is an old Scots word for childbed, and many of the poems come out of pregnancy and the birth of her children, She writes some of them in colloquial Scots. It won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 2000.
The Tree House
Poems about the natural world close to home — birds, trees, rivers and weather — and about how people can live alongside it. It won the Forward Prize for Best Collection in 2004 and was named Scottish Book of the Year in 2005.
Findings
Her first essay collection: watching a pair of peregrines try to nest near her home in Fife, travelling to Orkney and the chambered tomb of Maeshowe at the midwinter solstice, finding a whale carcass on a Hebridean beach, and looking at the anatomical specimens in Edinburgh’s Surgeons’ Hall. Richard Mabey called her a “supreme listener”.
Sightlines
Fourteen essays that range from icebergs in the Arctic and whale bones in Norwegian museums to a gannet colony and the jetty and military base on St Kilda. “Pathologies” moves between her mother’s death and an autopsy she attended at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. It won the John Burroughs Medal and the Orion Book Award in 2014.
The Overhaul
Short poems, many set outdoors among birds, trees and water. It won the Costa Poetry Award in 2012 and was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.
The Bonniest Companie
Jamie wrote a poem a week through 2014, the year of the Scottish independence referendum, which she called “a year of tremendous energy in my native Scotland”. The poems follow the seasons and turn to childhood and family memory. It won the Saltire Society’s Scottish Book of the Year in 2016.
Surfacing
About a third of the book follows six weeks she spent volunteering at Nunalleq, a Yup’ik village site near Quinhagak in Alaska that was being exposed by thawing permafrost and storm waves. Other long essays cover the Neolithic and Bronze Age dig at the Links of Noltland in Orkney and her time in Tibet in 1989. It won the Highland Book Prize.
Cairn
A book of micro-essays, prose poems, notes and fragments, set side by side “like the stones of a wayside cairn”. The pieces look at a changing landscape, the loss of birds such as the curlew, and her sense that, in her words, “life’s arc is becoming visible”.
In What Order to Read Kathleen Jamie
Nothing in Jamie continues from one book to the next, and the poetry and the prose can be read separately. If you are new to her, the essays are the easiest door: Findings, Sightlines and Surfacing were written seven years apart and can be read in that order, each going a little further from home.
For the poetry, publication order shows a real development: the travels and voices of the early books, the Scots and family poems of Jizzen, then the closer attention to the natural world from The Tree House on. Her Selected Poems (2018) is the quickest way to sample the whole range.
A reading path
1. Findings (2005)
2. The Tree House (2004)
3. Sightlines (2012)
4. The Overhaul (2012)
5. Surfacing (2019)
Everything Else Kathleen Jamie Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 9 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Poetry: collaborations and selections
7
7 books · 1986–2023
- 1986A Flame in Your Hearta sequence of poems written with Andrew Greig
- 1993The Autonomous Regionpoems and photographs from Tibet, with Sean Mayne Smith
- 2002Mr and Mrs Scotland Are Deadpoems 1980–94; shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize
- 2007Waterlighta selection published in the United States
- 2007This Weird Estatea short collaborative book
- 2018Selected Poemsa selection from her collections
- 2023Skeins o Geesetwelve poems with woodcuts by Jo Sweeting
Prose and anthologies
2
2 books · 2002–2020
- 2002Among Muslimsthe revised edition of The Golden Peak
- 2020Antlers of Wateras editor: writing on the nature and environment of Scotland
The years · 1962–2021
Quick facts about Kathleen Jamie
- Known for
- Kathleen Jamie is known for poems and essays that look closely at the natural world and Scotland’s past, and for serving as Scotland’s Makar, its national poet, from 2021 to 2024.
- 1962
- Born in Renfrewshire; grows up in Currie
- 1982
- First collection, Black Spiders
- 1994
- The Queen of Sheba
- 2004
- The Tree House
- 2021
- Becomes Scotland’s fourth Makar
- Born
- 13 May 1962, Renfrewshire; grew up in Currie, near Edinburgh
- Education
- Philosophy, University of Edinburgh
- Teaching
- Professor at the University of Stirling
- Makar
- Scotland’s national poet, 2021–2024, after Edwin Morgan, Liz Lochhead and Jackie Kay
- Fellowships
- Royal Society of Literature (2009), Royal Society of Edinburgh (2018)
- Archive
- National Library of Scotland, since 1998
The red mark is 2004: The Tree House, which won the Forward Prize and was named Scottish Book of the Year.
How Kathleen Jamie Writes: Looking Closely
Jamie’s essays start from something she has gone to look at: a nest, a tomb, a slide under a microscope, a trench on an archaeological dig. She records what she saw, heard and smelt and lets the meaning come out of the detail. The Spectator’s reviewer of Findings wrote that “there is nothing fey or arty about her writing”.
She resists the label of nature writer. “It’s all nature,” she told The Scotsman in 2012, and she puts hospital laboratories, power stations and military bases in the same frame as gannets and whales. In the same interview she described noticing she had used the word “I” seventeen times on a page, and wanting to “get out of the way and let us see the iceberg”.
In the poetry she moves between English and Scots, sometimes inside one collection, as in Jizzen. Her own statement of what stays constant is “a rigour, and a concern for musicality”. The poems are mostly short, with plain diction and close attention to sound.
Frequently asked questions about Kathleen Jamie’s books
How many books has Kathleen Jamie written?
About twenty, counting collaborations and selections. Twelve are the key books on this page, from Black Spiders (1982) to Cairn (2024); the rest are joint books, selected editions, a revised travel book and an anthology she edited.
What are Kathleen Jamie’s books in order?
Black Spiders (1982), The Way We Live (1987), The Golden Peak (1992), The Queen of Sheba (1994), Jizzen (1999), The Tree House (2004), Findings (2005), Sightlines (2012), The Overhaul (2012), The Bonniest Companie (2015), Surfacing (2019) and Cairn (2024).
Where should I start with Kathleen Jamie?
With Findings (2005), her first essay collection: peregrines near her home in Fife, Orkney at midwinter and a whale on a Hebridean beach. If you want to start with poems, read The Tree House (2004).
What is Kathleen Jamie’s most famous book?
Among the poetry, The Tree House (2004), which won the Forward Prize for Best Collection and was named Scottish Book of the Year. Among the prose, Findings (2005) and Sightlines (2012) are the best known.
Was Kathleen Jamie the Scottish Makar?
Yes. She was Scotland’s fourth Makar, the national poet, from August 2021 to December 2024, after Edwin Morgan, Liz Lochhead and Jackie Kay. In the role she wrote poems for the opening of the Scottish Parliament and for COP26, and put together collective poems from lines sent in by the public.
What prizes has Kathleen Jamie won?
Among others the Somerset Maugham Award for The Queen of Sheba, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize for Jizzen, the Forward Prize for The Tree House, the Costa Poetry Award for The Overhaul, the John Burroughs Medal for Sightlines, the Saltire Society Book of the Year for The Bonniest Companie and the Highland Book Prize for Surfacing.
Does Kathleen Jamie write in Scots?
Sometimes. She writes mainly in English but uses Scots in some poems, especially in Jizzen (1999), whose title is an old Scots word for childbed, and the title of Skeins o Geese (2023) is in Scots too.
Is Kathleen Jamie a nature writer?
She is often called one, and Sightlines won the John Burroughs Medal for nature writing, but she has resisted the label. “It’s all nature,” she told The Scotsman in 2012: her essays put hospitals, archaeology and human history alongside birds and landscape.
Is Kathleen Jamie still alive?
Yes. She was born on 13 May 1962 and lives in Fife. Her most recent book, Cairn, came out in 2024.
What is Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie about?
Archaeology and time. The longest essay follows six weeks at Nunalleq, a Yup’ik site in Alaska exposed by thawing permafrost; others cover a dig in Orkney and her journey through Tibet in 1989.
Footnotes
- Kathleen Jamie — Wikipedia
- Kathleen Jamie — British Council Literature
- Kathleen Jamie — Poetry Foundation
- Interview: Kathleen Jamie, author of Sightlines — The Scotsman, 2012
- From Quinhagak to Scotland — Anchorage Daily News, 2019
- Makar’s tenure ends — Scottish Government, 2024
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“There is nothing untouched. To hanker after the truly wild is a fantasy.”
— Kathleen Jamie, interview with The Scotsman (2012)
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