Finalist, T. S. Eliot Prize
Finalist, Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry
A CBC Book of the Year
Griffin Poetry Prize winner Karen Solie’s new collection, The Caiplie Caves, interrogates violence, power, economies, self-delusion, and belief in poems that orbit the Caves of Caiplie on the coast of Scotland.
In the seventh century, on the coast of Fife, Scotland, an Irish missionary named Ethernan withdrew to a cave in order to decide whether to establish a priory on May Island, directly opposite, in the Firth of Forth, or pursue a hermit’s solitude. His decision would have been informed by the realities of war, religious colonization, and ideas of progress, power, and corruption, and complicated by personal interest, grief, confusion, and a faith (religious and secular) under extreme duress. His choice between life as an “active” or a “contemplative” was one between public and private action. Along with the question of what constitutes action, it remains a choice central to political and private life.
Karen Solie’s fifth book of poetry, The Caiplie Caves, attends to transition in times of crisis. Around passages informed by Ethernan’s story are poems that orbit the geographical location of the caves but that range through the ages, addressing violence, power, work, economies, self-delusion, and belief. Indecision and necessity are inseparable companions. As are the prospect of error and regret.
Finalist, T. S. Eliot Prize
Finalist, Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry
A CBC Book of the Year
Griffin Poetry Prize winner Karen Solie’s new collection, The Caiplie Caves, interrogates violence, power, economies, self-delusion, and belief in poems that orbit the Caves of Caiplie on the coast of Scotland.
In the seventh century, on the coast of Fife, Scotland, an Irish missionary named Ethernan withdrew to a cave in order to decide whether to establish a priory on May Island, directly opposite, in the Firth of Forth, or pursue a hermit’s solitude. His decision would have been informed by the realities of war, religious colonization, and ideas of progress, power, and corruption, and complicated by personal interest, grief, confusion, and a faith (religious and secular) under extreme duress. His choice between life as an “active” or a “contemplative” was one between public and private action. Along with the question of what constitutes action, it remains a choice central to political and private life.
Karen Solie’s fifth book of poetry, The Caiplie Caves, attends to transition in times of crisis. Around passages informed by Ethernan’s story are poems that orbit the geographical location of the caves but that range through the ages, addressing violence, power, work, economies, self-delusion, and belief. Indecision and necessity are inseparable companions. As are the prospect of error and regret.
| Published By | House of Anansi Press Inc — Apr 9, 2019 |
| Specifications | 112 pages | 6 in x 8 in |
| Keywords | loneliness; anti-modernity; salve; modern anxieties; history and myth; disorder; geography; isolation; philosophy; contemplative; landscape as refuge; complexity; responsibility; empathy; geo-historical setting; metaphysical; unpretentious sobriety; anti-capitalist; textual analysis; T.S. Eliot Prize; Pat Lowther Memorial Award Longlist; |
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Excerpt |
| Written By |
KAREN SOLIE grew up in southwest Saskatchewan. Her five previous collections of poetry–Short Haul Engine, Modern and Normal, Pigeon, The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out, and The Caiplie Caves–have won the Dorothy Livesay Award, Pat Lowther Award, Trillium Poetry Prize, and the Griffin Prize, and been shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. A 2026 Windham-Campbell Prize recipient and 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, she teaches half-time for the University of St Andrews in Scotland and lives the rest of the year in Canada. |
| Written By |
|
KAREN SOLIE grew up in southwest Saskatchewan. Her five previous collections of poetry–Short Haul Engine, Modern and Normal, Pigeon, The Road In Is Not the Same Road Out, and The Caiplie Caves–have won the Dorothy Livesay Award, Pat Lowther Award, Trillium Poetry Prize, and the Griffin Prize, and been shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize and the T.S. Eliot Prize. A 2026 Windham-Campbell Prize recipient and 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, she teaches half-time for the University of St Andrews in Scotland and lives the rest of the year in Canada. |
Runner-up, T. S. Eliot Prize, 2019
Runner-up, Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, 2019
Commended, A CBC Book of the Year, 2019
"Solie takes her place among our best contemporary poets … The Caiplie Caves is Solie’s best work yet, full of true, beautiful, menacing things." — Harvard Review
"A significant achievement … The Caiplie Caves is a work of impressive layering and depth, full of call-backs, interweaving, careful research, and textual references." — Globe and Mail
"Wry, sharp-eyed, and uncompromising, The Caiplie Caves is the most ambitious collection yet from an essential poet." — Telegraph
"The intensity of language is extraordinarily sustained … Solie’s powers of description have never been so acute, her senses so greedy: seeing, as usual, entropy and prolificacy in a race against each other … Like Ethernan, Solie would deny that she works miracles. I beg to differ." — Ange Mlinko, New York Review of Books
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