By resorting to an almost children's nursery tempo and rhyme, she marries the images of her young heroine Iris-Abel with the most grotesque imagery to arrive at something very special and beautiful. Orlam comes with a facing-page English translation, so readers can follow the richness and subtlety of the original poem with ease. Poetry needs to create an entire world on the page without musical accompaniment, through form, rhyme, metre and tone.

Orlam by P.J. Harvey | Goodreads

Full-time Students, Under 26’s, visitors with disability or impairment (one carer get free entrance), people in receipt of Pension Credit, Universal Credit, Income Support or Job Seekers allowance.But she is at pains to point out that her childhood was not merely a bucolic idyll: “You’re aware, from a very early age, of the cycle of life and death and quickly learn that rhythm. In your late 40s, you realise you have to start letting go of the way you used to be, the way your body used to be, the way your face used to look.

PJ Harvey on superstition, dialect and poetry - New Statesman PJ Harvey on superstition, dialect and poetry - New Statesman

The setting is a benighted woodland village in Dorset, ‘veiled in vog’ and ‘rank with seepings’, where nine-year-old Ira-Abel Rawles lives in time with the rhythms of the year: sheep shearing, school terms, and the mysterious habits of her family and neighbours.The heady combination of dialect, folklore, Biblical imagery and rhyme can push the poems into archaism, making them seem runaway folksongs. It's a very brave and artful way of constructing a world, and for those who aren't put off by the initial unfamiliarity, full of rewards. And this from someone who, as a performer, is not frightened at all: “I never think of performance as something I have to be brave about. She lets slip that she has a new album coming out next year and, although not supposed to be talking about it, allows herself to say: “I’m really pleased with it – and I’m my own harshest critic. On the subject of the Dorset dialect, she shows me a copy of William Barnes’s 1886 glossary – her source for the poems – and talks about him as if he were an old friend.

PJ Harvey with Max Porter – Orlam: A Conversation - Komedia PJ Harvey with Max Porter – Orlam: A Conversation - Komedia

Despite the spell that Harvey's words cast over the reader, we are nonetheless immersed in a community as foul as a fly-blown corpse (paedophelia, rape, bestiality, mutant births, cruelty and disease) and there is little sweet air to refresh the senses. The rhyming narrative is not autobiographical yet the poems centre on nine-year-old Ira-Abel Rawles growing up in Dorset – as she did herself. The broad theme is ultimately one of love – carried by Ira’s personal Christ, the constantly bleeding soldier-ghost Wyman-Elvis, who bears ‘The Word’: Love Me Tender. Working with Polly – and watching her development as a poet over the years – has been a great privilege. Although she previously published another book of poetry, The Hollow of the Hand, in 2015, Harvey has since honed her skills under the mentorship of Scottish poet Don Paterson for a period of three years, during which she developed many of the ideas in Orlam.When her album Let England Shake (2011) came out, the Guardian’s critic Alexis Petridis ended his review with the judgment that it might be a “creative peak” and mused, “Where she goes from here is, as ever, anyone’s guess. Dying’s sinewy strangeness may come at the expense of the immediacy that was once Harvey’s strong suit, but this is how PJ Harvey albums work now: You feel them without being able to explain them.