Jen Hadfield – författare

Recipient of the Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry 2024Jen Hadfield is increasingly recognized as one of the singular poetic voices of our time, admired for the sheer vitality of her style and for her devotion to the natural world. Selected Poems offers a welcome retrospective, charting her development from the youthful wanderlust of Almanacs, through the incantatory praise songs of Nigh-No-Place for which she became the youngest ever winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize.Hadfield’s poetics are rooted in a panpsychist kinship with the non-human – a keen sensitivity to the consciousness that surrounds us, as she coaxes into language the essence of each thing. Nowhere is this more evident than in her rapt dialogue with the Shetland archipelago, translating its wild and abundant beauty, its idiosyncrasies and mythologies. ‘Home’, she writes, ‘is about using poetry to fashion myself a bivouac in the here and now, against the continual losses of the present tense’. Gathering poems from across the poet’s four collections alongside previously unpublished material, Selected Poems is a generous offering from one of our foremost poets of the natural world.

Recipient of the Windham Campbell Prize for Poetry 2024Jen Hadfield is increasingly recognized as one of the singular poetic voices of our time, admired for the sheer vitality of her style and for her devotion to the natural world. Selected Poems offers a welcome retrospective, charting her development from the youthful wanderlust of Almanacs, through the incantatory praise songs of Nigh-No-Place for which she became the youngest ever winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize.Hadfield’s poetics are rooted in a panpsychist kinship with the non-human – a keen sensitivity to the consciousness that surrounds us, as she coaxes into language the essence of each thing. Nowhere is this more evident than in her rapt dialogue with the Shetland archipelago, translating its wild and abundant beauty, its idiosyncrasies and mythologies. ‘Home’, she writes, ‘is about using poetry to fashion myself a bivouac in the here and now, against the continual losses of the present tense’. Gathering poems from across the poet’s four collections alongside previously unpublished material, Selected Poems is a generous offering from one of our foremost poets of the natural world.

Byssus is Jen Hadfield's third collection, and her first after the T.S. Eliot prize-winning Nigh-No-Place. Byssus - pronounced 'bissus', and meaning the mussel's 'beard', the tough fibres which anchor it to the seabed - is a book first and foremost about home, and what it takes to find and forge one: amongst friends, alert to mortality, to love and to landscape. Her language, strongly rooted in the common names she finds in the sea, shore and moor of her adopted Shetland, has already been widely admired for its startling originality. Here, through poems of astonishment and adoration, through charms and fables, and ultimately through a practice of attention and careful honouring - she shows how speech itself can be an act of home-making. Byssus is a profound consideration of just what it means to get to know a place.

Byssus is Jen Hadfield's third collection, and her first after the T.S. Eliot prize-winning Nigh-No-Place. Byssus - pronounced 'bissus', and meaning the mussel's 'beard', the tough fibres which anchor it to the seabed - is a book first and foremost about home, and what it takes to find and forge one: amongst friends, alert to mortality, to love and to landscape. Her language, strongly rooted in the common names she finds in the sea, shore and moor of her adopted Shetland, has already been widely admired for its startling originality. Here, through poems of astonishment and adoration, through charms and fables, and ultimately through a practice of attention and careful honouring - she shows how speech itself can be an act of home-making. Byssus is a profound consideration of just what it means to get to know a place.

Winner of the 2021 Highland Book PrizeJen Hadfield’s new collection is an astonished beholding of the wild landscape of her Shetland home, a tale of hard-won speech, and the balm of the silence it rides upon. The Stone Age builds steadily to a powerful and visionary panpsychism: in Hadfield’s telling, everything – gate and wall, flower and rain, shore and sea, the standing stones whose presences charge the land – has a living consciousness, one which can be engaged with as a personal encounter.The Stone Age is a timely reminder that our neurodiversity is a gift: we do not all see the world the world in the same way, and Hadfield’s lyric line and unashamedly high-stakes wordplay provide nothing less than a portal into a different kind of being. The Stone Age is the work of a singular artist at the height of her powers – one which dramatically extends and enriches the range of our shared experience.

A stunning love letter to life in Shetland and a wilder way of living by celebrated poet Jen Hadfield.'This book has been my friend' - Amy Liptrot, bestselling author of The Outrun'I was transported' - Katherine May, author of Wintering'A book as exhilarating as a dip in wild winter waters' - The Guardian'Deeply thoughtful and beautifully written' - Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater'A bewitching book' - The TelegraphIn her late twenties, poet Jen Hadfield moved to Shetland to make a new life. Here, in a rugged constellation of islands known for their isolation and drama, she found a place teeming with life, where rare seabirds blow in on Atlantic gales, an ancient language thrives, and a close-knit community is the beating heart of an entire world.In Storm Pegs, Hadfield transports us to the islands as a local, introducing us to the remote and beautiful archipelago where she has made her home, and shows us new ways of living at the edge.

'This book has been my friend' - Amy Liptrot, bestselling author ofThe Outrun'I was transported' - KATHERINE MAY, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF WINTERING'Deeply thoughtful and beautifully written' - SARAH MOSS, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SUMMERWATER'A book as exhilarating as a dip in wild winter waters' THE GUARDIANIn her late twenties, celebrated poet Jen Hadfield moved to the Shetland archipelago to make her life anew. A scattering of islands at the northernmost point of the United Kingdom, frequently cut off from the mainland by storms, Shetland is a place of Vikings and myths, of ancient languages and old customs, of breathtaking landscapes and violent weather. It has long fascinated travellers seeking the edge of the world.On these islands known for their isolation and drama, Hadfield found something more: a place teeming with life, where rare seabirds blow in on Atlantic gales, seals and dolphins visit its beaches, and wild folk festivals carry the residents through long, dark winters. She found a close-knit community, too, of neighbours always willing to lend a boat or build a creel, of women wild-swimming together in the star-spangled winter seas. Over seventeen years, as bright summer nights gave way to storm-lashed winters, she learned new ways to live.In prose as rich and magical as Shetland itself, Hadfield transports us to the islands as a local; introducing us to the remote and beautiful archipelago where she has made her home, and shows us new ways of living at the edge.From the winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Highland Book Prize and a recipient of the Windham Campbell Prize.

A stunning love letter to life in Shetland and a wilder way of living by celebrated poet Jen Hadfield.'This book has been my friend' - Amy Liptrot, bestselling author of The Outrun'I was transported' - Katherine May, author of Wintering'A book as exhilarating as a dip in wild winter waters' - The Guardian'Deeply thoughtful and beautifully written' - Sarah Moss, author of Summerwater'A bewitching book' - The TelegraphIn her late twenties, poet Jen Hadfield moved to Shetland to make a new life. Here, in a rugged constellation of islands known for their isolation and drama, she found a place teeming with life, where rare seabirds blow in on Atlantic gales, an ancient language thrives, and a close-knit community is the beating heart of an entire world.In Storm Pegs, Hadfield transports us to the islands as a local, introducing us to the remote and beautiful archipelago where she has made her home, and shows us new ways of living at the edge.

Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize. The language of Jen Hadfield''s poetry is one of incantation and secular praise. Her first book, Almana, was a traveller''s litany, featuring a road movie in poems set in the north of Scotland. Nigh-No-Place is the liturgy of a poet passionately aware of the natural world.Hadfield began her new book on the hoof, travelling across Canada, hungry for new landscapes. She took epic routes: the railway from Halifax to Vancouver and the Dempster Highway''s 740 km of gravel road, ending in the Arctic oiltowns of Inuvik and Tuktoktuk. But it is in Shetland that she becomes acutely aware of her own voice.Nigh-No-Place reflects the breadth of ground she''s covered. ''Ten-minute Break Haiku'' is her response to working in a fish factory. ''Paternoster'' is the Lord''s Prayer uttered by a draught-horse. ''Prenatal Polar Bear'' takes place in Churchill, Manitoba, surrounded by tundra.''Nigh-No-Place is a revelation: jaunty, energetic, iconoclastic -even devil-may-care...she is a remarkably original poet near the beginning of what is obviously going to be a distinguished career'' -Andrew Motion.''A zestful poet of the road... Jen Hadfield conjures poems of great spirit and imaginative daring from the northern landscapes. Lively, youthful and full of the joy of language'' -Kathleen Jamie.''Onomatopoeia, alliteration, rhyme and a smattering of Shetland dialect supply Hadfield''s world with a rackety music -claws on tarmac, a rock-chip hitting a windscreen, a waterproof crackling ''like a roasting rack of lamb''-which she orchestrates with a variety of forms including prose poems, incantations, spells and a prayer.... When much contemporary poetry has about it a whiff of the coterie, Hadfield''s refreshing voice carries all the way from the top of Scotland to blow some of the dust off British verse'' -Stephen Knight, Independent.

Almanacs: a mythic scrapbook, bag of cats, a one-man band...Jen Hadfield's Almanacs is concerned with lists, rules and archetypes and what they don't account for. It takes as its subjects the Tarot, the lore of Full Moons, weather myths and travellers' tales. The book's central sequence, Lorelei's Lore, is a road movie in poems, set in the north of Scotland: Ultima Thule, hijacked by elusive sirens and Harrier jets. There's the ruthless Lorelei, gorgeous Ghosty who's given up on everything except the Road, and Skerryman, patron saint of bad weather and absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder. It's obsessed with yearning, like the two seas separated by the tip of Shetland 'metres apart/and desperate for each other.' Lorelei's Lore wonders 'what's beautiful?' (tarmac? sheep carcasses? sunburn?) and 'where's your native home?'

Winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize 2008, shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection, Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The language of Jen Hadfield's poetry is one of incantation and secular praise. Her first book, "Almanacs", was a traveller's litany, featuring a road movie in poems set in the north of Scotland. "Nigh-No-Place" is the liturgy of a poet passionately aware of the natural world. Hadfield began her new book on the hoof, travelling across Canada with a ravenous appetite for new landscapes. She took epic routes: the railway line from Halifax to Vancouver and the Dempster Highway's 740 km of gravel road, ending in the Arctic oiltowns of Inuvik and Tuktoyuktuk. But it is in Shetland that she becomes acutely aware of her own voice - her fluency and tongue-tiedness; repetition, hiatus and breath. "Nigh-No-Place" reflects the breadth of ground she's covered. 'Ten-minute Break Haiku' is her response to working in a fish factory. 'Paternoster' is the Lord's Prayer uttered by a draught-horse. 'Prenatal Polar Bear' takes place in Churchill, Manitoba, surrounded by tundra.