‘I sat there, as the others worked, and wished, as I so often do, that I could draw.’ Where the poet Kathleen Jamie sat was within the rib cage of a blue whale, in the hvalsalen (the whale hall) of the natural history museum in Bergen. Her wish was needless because her written words make readers see with a clarity bestowed by only a few most gifted writers. It was, however, an enlightening wish. It expressed the intensity of her own seeing, her gift. Only someone with obsessively hungry eyes can write as she does. It makes her, to borrow John Berger’s words quoted on the jacket of Sightlines, ‘a sorceress of the essay form’.

Subscribe or Sign In to read the full article