Jofrid Gunn

Jofrid Gunn tells the story of a woman who came from the Faroe Islands in the 16th century to marry into the Clan Gunn, in the north of Scotland. Inspired by the glimpses of lives found in archives, this is a biography in poetry. Each poem can be read individually, but when put together they tell the story of Jofrid's life - descriptions of the incredible natural places she lived in, the power of the sea, her family life, encounters with the huldufolk or 'hidden people' of legend, and her small part in the clan battles and blood feuds of the time. "A wonderfully vivid and evocative book that intertwines poetry, small passages of prose, geography, history, even music and an awareness of human ancestry within its pages. The level of skill and craft in Jennifer Morag Henderson's new work is continually evident as it evokes both the existence of the Princess of Suthuroy and her connections to the history of Scotland. Its pages contain a moving and sensitive elegy to a past way of life, but it also does much more than that, immersing its readers into a world and existence that has largely disappeared from view." -Donald S. Murray "From the opening of this accomplished debut collection, we are with a poet who spins the lustre of her lyricism both through scholarly research and an intuitive, and innovative, sensitivity for specificity in language and tone as a meeting of the often-combative tides of diverse places and cultures. Henderson makes imminent not only the meaning of the runes but their musicality, tuning words, rhythm, metre and compelling characters to reflect the circling of seas between contesting 'norths': Scotland, the archipelagos of the North Sea and the Atlantic, and Faero. Avid in her attentive worlding; 'looping' the complex textual threads of histories and lore, like George Mackay Brown, Henderson trembles the web of North Atlantic connections through assured understanding of the moments - linguistic, cultural, historical - at which their timelines coincide; events around which 'swords and poets' songs' gather, and through which everyday lives are lifted to the realms of thought and memory. Jofrid Gunn is redolent with Glissant's 'poetics of relation', cinching past and contemporary concerns -precarity of climate and environment; conflicts; displacement and migrations; the complexity of quests for identity and belonging - in a wave weave of empathy. Journeying between 'gunwales' and 'water monsters', bringing only what can be carried - music, story; 'the ghost of a language in our mouths' - Henderson is our guide, inviting us to shelter in the lea of 'the song'; those nurtures of story and tradition, part sustained, part renovated, that give meaning, aiding us in ceasing from the 'tasks' of a striving life." -Cait O'Neill McCullagh