After a long creation process of six years, PJ Harvey has announced that his new book of narrative poetry Orlam will be released in 2022.
“After six years working at Orlam with my friend, mentor and editor Don Paterson, I am very happy to publish this book of poetry with Picador. Picador absolutely feels like the right home for it, and it's an honor to be in the company of poets like Jacob Polley, Denise Riley and Carol Ann Duffy, ”shared PJ Harvey in a statement about the book.
Orlam it is said to be the first book written in the Dorset dialect in decades. A hardcover copy of the book will be available in April 2022 with a special collector's edition following in October 2022. The latter will feature exclusive illustrations by PJ Harvey herself. Both will include an English translation of a facing page.
“Orlam follows Ira and the people of UNDERWHELEM month by month during the last year of their childhood innocence. The result is a sequence of poems of light and shadow, impregnated with signs of violence, sexual confusion and perversion, the oppression of the family, but also moments of ecstasy in sunny clearings, songs and obscene humor ”, reads the official description from the book. "The overall theme is ultimately one of love, carried by Ira's personal Christ, the constantly bleeding Wyman-Elvis ghost-soldier, carrying 'The Word': Love me tenderly."
Paterson added: “I am immensely proud that we are publishing such bold and original work with Picador. Working with Polly, and watching her development as a poet over the years, has been a great privilege. Orlam not only breaks new ground like a long poem, but brings an entire dialect back to life from the brink of its own extinction, reminding us how radically the world is altered by the way we talk about it. "
This year has marked a number of reissues of the esteemed PJ Harvey catalog, including the most recent, A woman next to a man, the second collaborative album by PJ Harvey and John Parish, which was reissued last July.
