Name: Orlam
Brand: PJ Harvey

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

9781529063110

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Colour

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format Books GB

Hardback

Format detail

Limited edition

Release date

2022-04-28

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Macmillan

Tax rate GB

Zero:0

UPC / Barcode

1 / Extended format: No / Hardback / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

9781529063127

Paperback

2025-04-18

Artist

PJ Harvey

Genre GB

Music

Label GB

Picador

<p>Polly Jean "PJ" Harvey MBE is an English musician and singer-songwriter. She began her career in 1988 as a vocalist, guitarist, and saxophone player for the Bristol band. In 1991, she formed her own band with former bandmates Rob Ellis (drums, backing vocals) and Ian Oliver (bass), naming it PJ Harvey. The trio released two albums before disbanding in 1993. Since then, PJ Harvey has continued to record music solo under the same name.</p>

Orlam reveals PJ Harvey as not only one of the most talented songwriters of the age, but a gifted poet – whose formal skill, transforming eye and ear for the lyric line has produced a strange and moving poem like no other.

Nine-year-old Ira-Abel Rawles lives on Hook Farm in the village of UNDERWHELEM. Next to the farm is Gore Woods, Ira’s sanctuary, overseen by Orlam, the all-seeing lamb’s eyeball who is Ira-Abel’s guardian and protector. Here, drawing on the rituals, children’s songs, chants and superstitions of the rural West Country of England, Ira-Abel creates the twin realm through which she can make sense of an increasingly confusing and frightening world. Orlam follows Ira and the inhabitants of UNDERWHELEM month by month through the last year of her childhood innocence. The result is a poemsequence of light and shadow – suffused with hints of violence, sexual confusion and perversion, the oppression of family, but also ecstatic moments in sunlit clearings, song and bawdy humour. 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. Orlam is not only a remarkable coming-of-age tale, but the first full-length book written in the Dorset dialect for many decades. Orlam also reveals P J Harvey as not only one of the most talented songwriters of the age, but a gifted poet – whose formal skill, transforming eye and ear for the lyric line has produced a strange and moving poem like no other.

Orlam

Books GB