Nigh-No-Place

Summary

Immersed in the dramatic, wind-scoured landscape of the Shetland Islands, these poems blend dialect words and local ecology with a fresh outsider's curiosity to create a voice that is wholly distinctive. Hadfield's poetry is intensely physical—she is alert to texture, weather, and the specific weight of things—and her outsider relationship to her adopted landscape gives the work an alertness that a native poet might not achieve. She was, at 30, the youngest winner in the prize's history.