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Poetry Collection

Book cover graphic. The illustration has swirling contour and ridge lines in pale and deep sky blues at the top and bottom opening onto a galaxy river of deep indigo brush marks and thistle-lilac splatters of stars. Overlaid with the title 'Time Cleaves Itself' and, in the bottom left, 'Jeda Pearl.'

Jeda Pearl’s debut poetry collection

Time Cleaves Itself invites you into the split and rewoven threads of a disabled Scottish woman of colour’s intersecting, in between worlds as she navigates belonging and claiming space. Landscapes and bodyscapes are brought into focus through lenses of race, illness, disability and womanhood. Here lyrical acts of observation unfold with defiance, tenderness, rhythm and the occasional side-eye. The accordion of time stretches across poems that deliver a sonic meditation on memory, grief, disability, belonging and resilience.

Cover artwork and design by Kezia Lewis

Published July 2024 by Peepal Tree Press // ISBN: 9781845235888

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Reviews of Time Cleaves Itself

“The bounding, intelligent wondrousness of Time Cleaves Itself challenges readers who may have despaired about where song belongs in challenging times. These poems inhabit and unlock the famed energy of both Scots and Caribbean literary heritage, knowing them intertwined of old. I’m overjoyed to see poetry’s future in Jeda Pearl’s work.” – Anthony (Vahni) Capildeo

“Jeda Pearl’s poetry is profound and demands attention. Time Cleaves Itself is a lyrical, visceral, and vivid collection recommended for readers who appreciate timeless, rich, and rhythmic poetry. Jeda Pearl’s unique voice and perspective are indispensable in the contemporary poetry landscape of Scotland and the UK.” – Etzali Hernández (Read full review on Gutter)

“An exciting debut collection negotiating an identity caught between a Jamaican and Scottish dual heritage. With an innovative mix of dialect (patois and brogue, rap and street slang) these poems follow brown bodies encountering racism, childbirth, disability; remembering slavery, colonialism and ancestral myths. The inventive use of the vernacular electrifies the page: “This land – dis ere land – is drookit with your blood” says the poet as she clarifies history and repression in a cauldron of past and present languages.” – Shash Trevitt for Poetry Book Society Autumn 2024 Bulletin

“Pearl’s homiletics are not simply about claiming nationhood: they show nationhood as a complex entity, a tree of roots and branches which it’s essential fully to acknowledge and own. […] Highland Daunder is a poem presented, in spite of the self-doubt, as proof of the poet’s belonging, of knowing a place and language as her own.” – Carol Rumens, Guardian Poem of the Week, July 2024

About Jeda

Jeda Pearl is a Scottish Jamaican writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Her poems and stories appear in art installations and several anthologies, and her debut poetry collection, Time Cleaves Itself, is published by Peepal Tree Press. Find her online @JedaPearl or jedapearl.com.

In 2022, Jeda’s poetry was was shortlisted for the Sky Arts RSL Award and longlisted for the Women Poets’ Prize. Find out more about Jeda

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Anthologies

Individual poems and short stories published in anthologies:

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