The Frank Skinner Show - Frank Skinner's Poetry Podcast: Kathleen Jamie

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

Frank views the world from a tree house, with the fabulous Kathleen Jamie. The poem referenced is “The Treehouse” from a collection called “The Treehouse” by Kathleen Jamie. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, this is Frank Skinner's poetry podcast. There is a Scottish poet called Kathleen Jamie, who's quite a high-achieving poet, and I would like to read a poem of us called The Treehouse from the collection of the same name, which was published in 2004, won the Forward Prize, won the Scottish Book of the Year. Kathleen Jamie, is a former Macca, I hope I've got that word right. I don't mean that she played bass in the bootleg Beatles. A Macca is a sort of Scots poet laureate, really. It's an old term for significant Scottish poets or bards, I suppose you might call them.

And it literally means maker, which is a very good term for a poet, because whether we like it or not, a poem is a contrivance. It is made. Okay. He says clearing his throat as if to read poetry. And I am about to. So this poem, The Treehouse, it's, oh, it's brilliant.

Well, see what you think. I don't want to lead you in any way, but I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't think it was good. but I think it's exceptionally good. Okay. I'll give you the first couple of stanzas. I should say that it is nine, five-line stanzas of, I guess, a regular length lines.

Well, it is a regular length, unrhymed, but fabulous rhythms, fabulous things going on internally. That sound, I don't know if you can pick that up, that's me scratching. myself, in anticipation, one might say. Here we go. First two stances of the treehouse by Kathleen Jamie. Hands on a low limb, I braced, swung my feet loose, hoisted higher, heard the town clock toll, a car bringe home from a club as I stooped inside. Here. Now here, here, does not have a full stop, but it's the end of the stanza.

And we've had many conversations you and I about line breaks and punctuation. They operate differently in a poem, but I'm going to read across both stanzas, so don't worry. So a car breached home from a club as I stooped inside here, I was unseeable. A bletted fruit hung through tangled branches just to. out of reach. Over house roofs, sullen hills, the firth drain down to sandbanks,

the racket lady, the shear as dith. I am anxious about doing Scottish pronunciations. You saw how I was nervy about Macca. Wreckit lady and the shear as d'ath I will excuse myself for. and I hope you will join me in that. Anyway, here goes enough, flaf.

Hands on a low limb, I braced, swung my feet loose, heisted, higher. What an energetic beginning to a poem. Hands on a low limb. And yes, I love the alliteration. Hands on a low limb. I braced, swung my feet loose, hoisted higher. Now, if you take those first two of them, lines. They are all monosyllabic words apart from the last two. Hands on a low limb, I

braced, swung my feet loose, hoisted higher. Those last two are two syllable words. And what that does, for me at least, rhythm-wise, is hoisted higher. You feel the effort of that a bit more because it's almost like the stretch of hoisting higher after all those. You're with me on that. Come on, trust me a little bit. And the whole first stanza, I think, uses that technique. So monosyllables, hands on a low limb, I braced, swung my feet loose, hoisted higher. Now I've got car horns outside, forgive me. heard the town clock toll a car bringe home from a club again all monosyllabic words all one syllable

heard the town clock toll a car bringe home from a club as i stooped inside and inside is the first two-syllable word in that section and it's to me it feels like she's climbing the tree. I'll be honest with you. You might think I'm reading too much into that. But inside sounds like a landing. It's almost like a two feet landing there. I'll give you that first answer again. Hands on a low limb I braced, swung my feet loose, hoisted higher, heard the town clock toll, a car bringed home from a club as I stooped inside. here and then that's going to take us into the next stanza. So just have another look at the first stanza.

Hands on a low limb, I brace, swung my feet loose, hoisted higher. She's climbing. Heard the town clock toll. A car, Bringe home from a club. Bringe is a Scots word, as I understand it, meaning to lunge forward as I stooped inside. Now, there are words in this. this which suggests that the speaker gazed out from her perch in what I would call a reflective mood. The clock toll sounds about time steadily ticking. Stooped sounds like someone who isn't

fully extended. Whereas this from a distance, a car that will bringe home from a club. That sounds like life happening over there. This car lunging forward from a club. I also think it's a clever way of telling us that it's night time because who comes home from a club in the daytime in a bringing car. So hands on a lonely my brace, swung my feet loose, hoisted higher, heard the town clock toll,

A car bringe home from a club as I stooped inside. The fact that it's called the tree house obviously leads us to think she's climbing a tree. When she says inside, she's inside a tree house. She's gone to what one might think of as a child's place. And it may be a child at this point. Here I was unseeable. Remember that on seable. I think it's relevant. A bletted fruit hung through tangled branches just out of reach. Now what is a bletted fruit? Well, it is a fruit that after it's picked is left to ripen in storage to make it get a bit sweeter.

So when you first read that, you might think, oh, she can actually see a bletted fruit hung through tangle branches just out of reach. But I think, because you can't technically speak and have a bletted fruit growing on a tree, because as I say, the bletting process is post-picking. I think maybe a poem is like a bletted fruit. Hear me out. In that is it is ripened in storage for sweetness. So it is like a memory that is taken and then stored in the mind to become sweeter, to become more ordered, to become more ornate. Yes, it's my usual accompanying siren, guys.

So I'm going to give it you one more time. on a low limb I braced, swung my feet loose, hoisted higher, heard the town clock toll. The word toll does sound ominous. A car brenged home from a club. And again, I think that suggests life and an exciting world, an exciting, I guess it's FOMO, fear of missing out, exciting things happening somewhere else as I stooped inside. Here I was on seable. So it sounds like a desire to be unseeable, a climbing to a treehouse to get away from the world below. Well, I will hopefully we'll find out. One might say, I suppose, that every poem is written from some vantage point, some overview surveying the scene.

Anyway, bletted fruit hung through tangled branches just out of reach. Maybe that is the poem, as I say, a poem a ripened experience, ripened after the event, just like a bletted fruit. And at the moment, it hung through tangled branches just out of reach. So maybe she's gone up there to compose And at the moment it's not quite there Over house roofs Sollen hills

The Firth Drain down to Sandbanks The Wreckit Lady The Shearer's Deith Now These are sandbanks Reckit Lady and the Sheaerers' Dath I'm going to ignore the siren On the Firth of

Tay, obviously in Scotland. And she is looking out at them, it seems, from the trio's over house roofs. Solon hills, again like the clock toll. There's just a feeling of melancholy here. Solon hills, the firth drained. That's where the line ends. And something being drained, something sullen, a clock toll in it. It feels sad.

Down to sandbanks, the firth drain down to sandbanks, that's when the sandbanks are revealed, obviously, when the water goes low. They are now visible. And there are two sandbanks on the Firth of Tai called the Wreck-It-Lady and the Shea-as-Dath. Now, I don't know if those have been mentioned because they're the ones that she could actually see from an actual treehouse

or whether there is no treehouse, whether this is a fictional speaker, some form of Kathleen Jamie, as is often the case in poems. I just looked at Sandbanks on the Firth of Tay kind of thing I like to do when I'm reading a poem. I mean, there's one called Little Bank, there's one called McKinness Bank, She could have chose those, I suppose, but maybe she can't see them. Maybe they're just not poetic enough sounding. Little Bank is no competition, is it, for Sheaer's Death or Shure as Death? And Wreck-it-Lady, we sort of think, was that a wrecked lady?

Is that what, is that some ominous echo of the speaker? but I mean I looked into this and I'm obviously nervous about talking about Scots and the like. I go to Robert Burns of course. That's a good place to start. He uses Rikit in Tamoshanta, a fantastic poem which I would recommend, but which I'll never cover on these podcasts because I'm too afraid of doing a lot of Scots dialect and sounding like I'm out of my depth and disrespectful and culturally appropriating. But I would recommend you read it.

It's really exciting and funny and brilliant. In Tamashanta, these witches, well, they danced until they swat and reek it, which means sweated and smelled. I doubt that this is the smelly lady. I doubt that's what it means. The obvious things it could be the wrecked lady, but again, Riquit Lane is one of the theories. Riquet Lane, I'm told, is a house standing alone,

and they think it might be a bastardisation of that term. Who knows? But it sounds right for this slightly bittersweet beginning, I think. think. Sure as death, by the way, sounds like a place. They both sound like their racket lady and sure as death, sound like dangerous places, dangerous sandbanks that finish people off. Sure as death, I understand from my reading, was called that by the fishermen because you were as sure as death to catch fish there, so it's not so bad. But anyway, the point is this is a poet in a treehouse, and if my theory about bletted fruit,

is right. She is germinating a poem, just like that bletted fruit. She's taking a memory and she's ripening it in storage. And she looks out

over the firth, down to sandbanks, the racket lady, the shearer's deith, and it doesn't matter whether she can see them or not. They are good choices. They sound poetic. They sound dramatic and much better than Little Bank, for example.

I'm not going to say better than McKinness Bank in case there's any McKinness is listening. Okay, I will continue. So she's in the tree house now. I lay to sleep beside me neither man nor child, but a likened branch wound through the wooden chamber, pulling it close. a complicity like our own when arm in arm on the city street we bemoan our families

our difficult sonic anchorage in the apple sweet earth right I lay to sleep beside me neither man nor child but a likened branch wound through the wooden chamber so she's in the trioes it sounds like she's in an embrace with a likened branch.

Now, likened as in it had lichen growing on it. You may remember there in a previous poetry podcast, I talked about how lichen can be pronounced both lichen and lichon. And poets tend to choose the pronunciation that works with the sounds around it. And here, I think, neither man nor child, a likened branch sounds almost like a branch that's like that, a branch that's replacing a man or a child, a branch that's lying next to me as I sleep, I might have my arm round it, it might be sort of embracing me. And it's a fabulous closeness to the tree. You know, I've got a thing about trees.

If you listen regularly, I am a tree hogger unashamedly. I lay to sleep beside me neither man nor child but a likened branch wound through the wooden chamber. That's the tree house. Brilliant. Pulling it close. The tree pulling the tree house close to it, but also I think her pulling the branch, the tree, closer to her. A complicity. It sounds like they're lying there together.

like they share an intimacy. Her and this lichened branch, something solid and sturdy and the growth of lichen on it's suggesting that it's been there a long time. You may again recall from a previous podcast that I said that lichen was one of the oldest known organisms on earth.

Wound through the wooden chamber, pulling it close, to complicity on to the next stanza like our own. When arm in arm on the city street, we bemoan our families, our difficult, sonic anchorage in the apple sweet earth.

Now, on the subject of pronunciation, she's gone for, I think, like an over-litchin, which is the most common one, not that that would necessarily entice, a poet, of course. But thonic anchorage, what is that? Our difficult, sonic anchorage in the apple sweet earth. So it sounds like she's talking to someone now who she's close to, a friend, a lover,

because her lying with the tree is a complicity like our own when arm in arm on the city street, we bemoan our families. So they moan about their families and complain. Our difficult sonic anchorage in the apple sweet earth. Now, thonic, I should say, spelled C-T-H-O-N-I-C. And that also has alternative pronunciations. It can be pronounced with a hard C at the beginning. So it becomes cathonic anchorage.

I like catholic anchorage because those kthc-k-k-k-k sounds. And we get an extra one, obviously, when we get that. They sound spiky. So our difficult cathonic anchorage, it sounds difficult. It's a bit spiky and a bit hard. to handle. And it compares nicely with the last line in the apple sweet earth, which has a beautiful soft sounds, the apple sweet earth. No, kchkk. So I hope that Kathleen Jamie pronounces it

catholic. I haven't listened to her read this poem, although such readings are available, because I want to leave myself the possibility of talking about it like that. What does it mean, anyway, whether it's Thonic or Cothonic? It means sort of of the underworld. So it can actually refer to the deities, people like Hades. And I suppose to some extent, Persephone, his slightly abducted wife, actually not that slightly. so you could call an underworld deity a thonic,

or it can be a description of the underground. I believe it's Greek for earth or soil. What I think she's saying here is she's walking arm and arm with someone she's close to, a bit like she's lying with this tree. And they're walking around the city streets, moaning about their families, and our difficult sonic or cathonic anchorage. So the way we are tied to this land, this earth.

And to tie in with the underworld, it makes it sound a bit low on light, a bit hidden, a bit unseen. And you remember early in the poem, she says right at the beginning of the second stanza, I was unseeable. And I feel that this poem is partly about being unseeable, partly about feeling like no one knows you exist. And that can happen if you are growing up, I don't know about Kathleen Jamie's background. But I grew up in a working class family in the West Midlands,

and that was how I felt invisible, invisible. And I couldn't feel a way out of it. And when I achieved, I'm going to use the F word, when I achieved fame, I felt like suddenly I was seen. And maybe I was seen for all the wrong superficial reasons. But it was nice to be seen, I have to tell you. It feels like these two walking arm in arm are talking about difficult, tonic cathonic anchorage in the apple sweet earth it seems the problem of roots the problem of family and place and the way they

hold you and the way they constrain you but also they are apple sweet they also make you feel safe and secure and they bring love with them usually and i think this point poem is about that conflict between thinking, I want to be free and away. I don't want to be underground. I don't want to be on scene. But anchorage, yeah, it's a spiky word, especially if you use it with catholic, but also there's something very safe and secure about anchorage. You could argue, of course, that safety and security is easily equated with the comfort zone that none of us ever achieve anything within. But yeah, I think that's a fair point. Okay. So the Apple Sweet Earth, although it seems to be here a place that they are

stock this anchorage in the Apple Sweet Earth. And I think that's probably family and place and community. It also sounds quite alluring, doesn't it, the apple sweet earth, in the way that belonging somewhere is alluring. Moving on, I'm going to read a couple of stanzas in a go. So we've talked about our difficult phonic anchorage in the apple sweet earth, without whom we might have lived the long ebb of our mid-decade-decade-alone in shen. and attic rooms, awake in the moonlit sooty rains of our own minds, without whom we might have lived a hundred other lives, like taxi strangers hail and higher, the turn abruptly on the gleaming sets and head for elsewhere. Kathleen, oh man, I love you. Without whom, so whom being that family,

anchorage in the local culture without whom we might have lived the long ebb of our mid-decade. We're getting the sense now that the person who's climbed up the tree is not a child. That's what we normally expect to find in a tree house, I think, that this is an older woman in her mid-decade, the long ebb of our mid-decade. There's no flow. We talk about ebb and flow. Things go out and then they come back in like the sea. That doesn't happen with your decades.

They just go. So talks of her family, bemoan our families dot dot dot, without whom we might have lived, the long ebb of our mid decades, alone in sheds and attic rooms, awake in the moonlit sooter rains of our own minds. Now, this is the feeling, I think,

that if I hadn't stayed with my family, if I hadn't stayed in my hometown, I could have been living a romantic, different, alternative life, alone in sheds and attic rooms. The lure of being alone when you're part of a close-knit family and community is always there. Awake in the moonlit Sioux terrains. Sue terrains are sort of underground structures. I'm going to show my ignorance now. They may be Bronze Age, they may be Iron Age. But she's up in a treehouse and I think she has gone there to look down on this world, this community, to survey, to consider, to process it.

I think she's also gone up there because it's a childlike thing to do. and childhood is a place to go if you're considering how your life could have been different. That's where the roots start to be taken. And speaking of roots, also to be up in this lichen tree, it's a bit like the family, isn't it? It's solid and old and embracing. So there's something cool about being alone in sheds and attic rooms awake in the moonlit suitorines of our own minds. Obviously, suitorrains are not normally moonlit because they're underground. But when they're in your own minds, they still have all that romantic, all that

ethereal, all that poetic mood lighting that you want when you romanticize and always alternative life that you might have lived. So that family without whom we might have lived a hundred other lives like taxis, strangers, hail and higher, that turn abruptly on the gleaming sets and head for elsewhere, sets being old paving stones used for roads. And those, all the other things we could have done, the other places we could have gone, the other decisions we could have made, like taxi strangers, hail and hire, that turn abruptly on the gleaming sets and head for elsewhere.

And when a taxi turns abruptly, it's when you get in a taxi and tell them where you want to go, and they turn around immediately, a sharp you turn often. And it suggests a change in direction. It suggests difference. And she's saying, we could have done that. That's what our life, we could have just turned around and gone a different way like strangers do in taxes. Strangers aren't by definition, of course, part of the family or the close-knit community. They are outsiders, not restrained by these localized conventions, and they can live there seemingly glamorous lives wherever and however they like.

And head for elsewhere is a great line because it doesn't matter where, just not here. Getting a taxi and saying not here, please. That's the idea. More sirens. We're almost there. Three stanzas to go. Suppose just for the hell of it, we flagged one. She's still talking about those taxis.

Suppose just for the hell of it, we flagged one. What direction would we give? Would we still be driven here? Our small town, Ithacus, our settlements hitched tight beside the river, where we're best played out in gardens of dockons and ladies' mantle, kids' bikes stranded on the grass, where we've knocked together,

and then we go into the last answer. Suppose just for the hell of it we flag one, what direction would we give? So if we were going to go out of our community, if we were going to live a different life, if we were going to seek out those attics and those moonlit suitor rains and those sheds, what direction would we give?

Would we still be driven here, our small town Ithacus? Now, Ithaca, you may know if you've read, Homo's Odyssey is where, so we're told, Adesius comes from, who went on all these voyages and had all these amazing adventures. Our small town, Ithacus, our settlements hitched tight beside the river. Now, why bring up Ithaca? Well, Odysseus, I think, is seen as the great adventurer,

because he goes on this amazing voyage. But he is trying to get home throughout those adventures. So he too has got a thonic anchorage in the apple sweet earth. He too is tied to his home. Ithaca is also believed by Somm to be the home of Homer himself. And it's fitting, isn't it, that her small town, Ithaca, is also, of course, the home of a poet. I think the speaker, as I've said, the speaker reaching for that bletted fruit seems to be a poet. And certainly a longing for time alone, especially in Attics, and absolutely definitely in the suitorrains of her own mind, is the perpetual yearnesty.

of the poet, I would say, who just, they just want to be left alone to write. Suppose just for the hell of it, we flagged one, what direction will we give? Would we still be driven here, our small town, Ithaca's. So if we got in the cab, would we still be drawn back here? Is it inescapable? Our settlements hitch tight beside the river. Now, we had talk of. sandbanks, which she can see from the treehouse. So yeah, we accept that she's hitched tight beside

the river. But hitch tight beside the river, after you've mentioned Ithaca, the home of Odysseus, who went on this incredible voyage, hitch tight sounds very safe, doesn't it? It sounds very protected. it sounds sheltered. And again, even as she fantasizes about getting in this cab and heading for elsewhere, the images of home, the lure of home, is still there. Suppose just for the hell of it we flagged one, what direction would we give,

would we still be driven here, our small town Ithaca's, our settlements hitched tight beside the river, where we're best played out in gardens of dockons and ladies mantle. They're both flowers. My dad grew docks, as we call it. I think there are things that are found in working class gardens. My dad was a keen gardener. Often the city dweller just reaching out for a bit of nature,

the working class gardener. where we're best played out in gardens of dockons and ladies mantle kids bikes stranded on the grass now the phrase there where we're best played out played out can mean enacted of course that that's where we are best played out that's where we're best performed that's where we is our natural stage Also, it's about playing out kids' bikes and the garden and all that, but played out can also mean sort of washed out and spent. So even as it seems, she's sort of starting to accept that this is the best place where we're best played out in Gardens of Dockons and ladies' mantles,

kids' bikes stranded on the grass. Played out is quite a negative term to use. it suggests a lack of energy and color and excitement. And also stranded on the grass is, having used all these terms, I've been put in our mind the voyages of Odysseus have been hitched tight beside the river. Now suddenly we're stranded on the grass

or the kids' bikes are just using words like played out and stranded. Still, that thing of what did we mean? this by staying here. Okay, last line of this stanza and then into the last stanza. Where we've knocked together of planks and packing chests a dwelling of sorts. So we're right now back into the tree house. Where we've knocked together of planks and packing chests a dwelling of sorts. A gall we've asked the tree to carry of its own dead and every spring to drink to grape in leaf and blossom like a pall. So, where we've knocked together of planks and packing chests,

a dwelling of sorts, that's the treehouse. A gall we've asked the tree to carry. Now a gall is the sort of swelling that you get on a tree, a sort of growth. And interestingly, they are used. I don't know if they're still used, but they were used to make ink. And whenever I hear any kind of reference to ink in a poem,

I'm thinking we're being told something. They were about poetry about this poem, about the writing of a poem, aren't we? And if it is true, my theory, when she refers to a bletted fruit, hung through tangled branches, just out of reach, she's out of reach of the world below. but a bletted fruit, as I said, is something which is ripened in storage afterwards,

just like a poem. And the fact that this tree house is a gall, a thing that makes ink, this poem will be, of course, it's used ink. It's produced ink, this gall, this tree house. It's produced ink in that it's produced ink. that it's produced this poem. It's the place, the setting for this poem to be composed. You think I'm pushing it, but I really feel that in my bones.

A gall we've asked the tree to carry of its own dead. I mean, that is brilliant, isn't it? Because it's a wooden treehouse. So they've asked the tree to carry its own dead. Wood is dead a tree. I suppose you could say. So the tree is carrying its family, if you like, in that it's come from other trees,

a bit like the speaker seems to carry her family, carry us emotional and psychological baggage. And this tree carrying its own dead, it ends with this, and every spring to drape in leaf and blossom like a pall, a pall being a heavy cloth laid over a coffin. So the tree carries its own dead, its own dead family, if you like. It is bearing the treehouse as if it is carrying a coffin,

that every spring it drapes in leaf and blossom. The tree that we now held the treehouse in a close embrose. carries its family, its tribal memory. It's a burden, but it's a burden carried with love, a burden that's adorned and made beautiful. And I think this poem is like that Paul of Leaves and Blossom. It acknowledges the burden of tribe and place, but also the security and love. It finds, the beauty and the poetry in those conflicting feelings. That's what this poem means to me, and it may mean something different to you.

It may mean something different to Kathleen, Jamie. But we're all, I think, as I've said before, with great respect to her, she is the first reader of the poem. But when we read it with due care and attention, then it also belongs to us. To me, it's about those issues. I think it's truly fabulous.

I've only read one Kathleen Jamie poem on this podcast, but there's lots more. And prose, if you're interested in prose, she is really, really worth seeking out. I think, having heard this, you will agree. So, look, thank you so much for listening to this series of Frank Skinner's poetry podcast. hope you've enjoyed it and I will see you soon.