Prizes

Long-listed for Highland Book Prize 2023

'A book of poems, a book of voices. A book that is also a map, an almanac, a report - of histories, of stories, of lands and waters. A book of poems made and arranged in such a way as to create harbours and enclosures: the contained order of narrative brought to a wild scattering of events; a careful arrangement of whale bones on a gallery floor to tell the tale of that great singing creature now stilled to silence.' - Kirsty Gunn; 'This is a book of precise and uncompromisingly beautiful writing about northern place: Orkney, Iceland, far seas of the imagination. A few words, brilliant and disquieting in choice and cadence, transport the reader to distant islands and their weather. As you read, you are alone in a remote stone house at nightfall, with the wind rising from the sea below the windows.' - Peter Davidson; 'A great poem consists of alternate measures of words and silence; and in the greatest work the silence is as important as the words to which it gave birth. Lesley Harrison is a writer of consistent brilliance, who with just a handful of words can conjure song from silence. These are warnings, elegies and celebrations... Kitchen Music is a meticulously crafted Northern Hymnal - a brilliantly conceived orison to the flora and fauna of the higher latitudes. This collection is essential reading for anyone keen to understand why poetry remains a unique force for change on this planet.' - John Glenday

Lesley Harrison has published six collections of poetry, including the poetry pamphlet Blue Pearl, published by New Directions. She has lived and worked in Istanbul, West Africa, Mongolia, and the Orkney Islands, off Scotland's northern coastline. Harrison has held writing residencies in Iceland, Greenland, Svalbard, and The Center for Hellenic Studies at Harvard University. She lives in a small fishing village on the Angus coast of Scotland, where she also works as a teacher supporting language and literacy development.; Kirsty Gunn is the author of several novels and collections of short stories, including the internationally award-winning novel about the Highlands of Scotland and the musical form of piobaireachd, The Big Music. She is Research Professor at the University of Dundee and Associate Member of Merton College, Oxford.