For several years now, Kathleen Jamie's work has addressed two principal concerns: how we negotiate with the natural world, and how we should define our conduct within family and society. In The Tree House Jamie argues - as Burns did before her - for an engagement of the whole being through a kind of practical earthly spirituality. These often startling encounters with animals, birds, and other humans propose a way of living which recognises the earth as home to many different consciousnesses -- and a means of authentic engagement with 'this, the only world'. Together they form one of the most powerful poetic statements of recent years.

Kathleen Jamie, one of the Britain's foremost poets, was born in Scotland in 1962. She has published four collections of poetry -- Black Spiders (1982), The Way We Live (1987), The Queen of Sheba (1994) and Jizzen (published by Picador 1999) -- and a travel book, The Golden Peak: travels in Northern Pakistan (1992). She has received various honours, including the Somerset Maugham (1994) and Geoffrey Faber Memorial (1996, 2000) awards, and the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem (1996). She lives in north Fife, Scotland, with her young family.