Storm Pegs

Storm Pegs perfectly captures the knotting of language and landscape. I was transported. – Katherine May, Sunday Times bestselling author of WinteringStorm Pegs is rich, attentive and beautifully written. Hadfield writes vividly about the tides, the Shaetlan language, and shows a great appreciation for the people and modern life of Shetland. This book has been my friend. I really loved it and I recommend it – Amy Liptrot, author of The OutrunDelightful: at once intricate and effortless, playful and deeply-felt. A heartfelt paean to a coldwater Eden. – Cal Flyn, author of  Islands of AbandonmentWhat a wonderful book. Jen Hadfield just has to turn her languaged gaze to the world and it fizzes to life on the page. One of the most intensely realised accounts of a place - and time in a place - I have read. – Philip Marsden, author of The Summer IslesStorm Pegs is a deeply thoughtful and beautifully written account of a life centred on making art in a lively island community. Hadfield writes with rare nuance about choosing and building a new life in a place that calls to many of us. – Sarah Moss, author of SummerwaterA gorgeous portrait of a fascinating, ever-changing place, as well as very many other things: friendship, community, creation and self-creation, the cycle of the seasons and the toil and triumph of the elements. I adored it. – Sara Baume, author of A Line Made By WalkingA book as exhilarating as a dip in wild winter waters. * Guardian *This book is brim-full of love for Shetland – for its land and seascapes, for its people and language. Hadfield’s writing is fuelled by unceasing curiosity and attentiveness. It is vivid, lively and fresh – Malachy Tallack, author of Sixty Degrees NorthIn this memoir, written after 17 years living in this wild, wonderful place, Hadfield reflects on her pristine but often brutal surroundings, where seals and dolphins nose up to the beaches and residents enjoy wild swimming through wintry seas. – GQ, The best books of 2024Storm Pegs is as much an account of the author finding new personal bearings as a series of magic lantern slides about insular life … This is a great, bright birl of a book – thoroughly beguiling. * The Spectator *Hadfield paints Shetland vividly as a place ever-changing. Storm Pegs is a powerful hymn to Shetland and to community, as well as to the awesomeness of nature. This is a bewitching book, tactile and immersive, riven with salt winds, alive with human oddities and loud with the cries of seabirds. Everything glows in the light of Hadfield’s words, from slimy sea molluscs to grand island vistas. * The Telegraph *A sensual love letter to the beautiful island of Shetland * The Herald *A book to be read slowly, while savouring the details * The Scotsman *

Jen Hadfield was the youngest poet to win the T. S. Eliot Prize for her second collection, Nigh-No-Place, which was also shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best Collection. She has also won an Eric Gregory Award and the Edwin Morgan Poetry Competition. She lives in Shetland with her family.