The award-winning poet Karen Solie's striking fifth collection of poetry blends the story of a seventh-century monk with contemporary themes of economic class, environmentalism, and solitude in an ever-connected worldif one asks for a signmust one accept what's given?Ethernan, an Irish missionary in the seventh century, retreated to the Caiplie Caves on the eastern coast of Scotland to consider life as a hermit. In The Caiplie Caves, Karen Solie's fifth collection of poems, short-listed for the T. S. Eliot Prize, Solie inhabits a figure inspired by Ethernan, a man torn between the communal and the contemplative. His story is remarkable for the mysticism embedded in the ordinary; as Solie writes in her preface, Ethernan is not known for supernatural feats, but "is said to have survived for a very long time on bread and water." Interwoven with the voice of this figure are poems whose subjects orbit the physical location of the caves and join the sharply contemporary to the mythic past: the fall of a coal-fired power station; a "druid shouting astrology" outside a liquor store, putting "the Ambien in ambience"; seabirds "frontloaded with military tech"; the dichotomous nature of the stinging nettle. These are meditations on the crisis of time and change, on class, power, and belief. Above all, these are ambitious and exhilarating poems from one of today's most gifted poetic voices.

CONTENTSPreface "In this foggy, dispute-ridden landscape" IThe North Sauchope Links Caravan Park Crail Autumn A Plenitude NO 59981 05825; 56.24324° N, 2.64731° W Having abandoned his mission . . . Efforts are made to dissuade him . . . Evidence of his own cult in Pictland . . . "Ethernan" likely derived from the Latin . . .The Desert Fathers "When Solitude Was a Problem, I Had No Solitude" Tentsmuir Forest A Miscalculation The Spies Mercenaries Know There's Always Room for Specialists in the Market The Meridian Whose Deaths Were Recorded Officially as Casualties of "The Battle of May Island" Song I INO 59981 05825; 56.24324° N, 2.64731° W He remembers a friend . . . Like Cormac Ua Liatháin, he sought . . . Hostilities were inevitable among the four peoples . . . Now blood on his lip . . . Tomorrow, for sure, he will make a start . . . A vision He reexamines his practice A visitation He enquires of the silence An Enthusiast From The Invertebrate Fauna of the Firth of Forth, Part 2, 1881 The Shags, Whose Conservation Status Is "of Least Concern" "Goodbye to Cockenzie Power Station, a Cathedral to Coal" A Trawlerman She Is Buried on the West Braes White Strangers Origin Story Kentigern and the Robin To the Extent a Tradition Can Be Said to Be Developed; It Is More Accurate to Say It Can Be Clothed in Different Forms An Unexpected Encounter with He Who Has Been Left Alone to His Perils A Retreat Song IIISong A Lesson The Intercessors Crail Spring The Sharing Economy Time Away with the Error Two Chapters on Ancient Stones Ancient Remedies with Contemporary Applications Currently in Development 56.1833° N, 2.5667° W The Isle of May lies just outside the western boundary . . . Its paved road, which has all the appearance . . . Having once dwelt at Caiplie, "place of horses" . . . In a purposeful adoption of an ancient burial site . . . You Can't Go Back Stinging Nettle Appreciation The Hermits Clarity NotesAcknowledgements