Orlam

Introduction

This year for my birthday Fiona bought me the new PJ Harvey album "I Inside The Old Year Dying" and then found that there was a linked book "Orlam" so I got that as well. I love everything that Polly Jean does, even though I don't have everything she has done.

I love the album, and the book is beautiful but I found it a little confusing. It seemed like a diary but written as a poem but with a lot of apparent near repetition.

Like any man, I leapt into this beautiful book without fully reading the back cover and introduction which fully explains what the book is and it's purpose.

This is what I found out.

Exploring Orlam

Orlam's description in the book is written thus:

Remade from Mallory

I ever-see my kingdom

One eye high in The Ultimate Elm

Protector of Ira-Abel

And oracle of UNDERWHELEM

This is taken from the back cover and you may read the text in full on the Amazon website.

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.

Orlam follows Ira and the inhabitants of UNDERWHELEM month by month through the last year of her childhood innocence. The result is a poem-sequence of light and shadow

With this knowledge, the book suddenly makes beautiful sense instead of just being a beautiful book full of hidden secrets that I don't know how to unlock.

Earlier I mentioned that there is a lot of repetition in the book, and in her introduction, Polly Jean tells us that is written in the Dorset dialect with the English translation on the left. The more dense the dialect the darker the text though it does make it a little difficult for me to read if the light is not good.

The book has a full glossary and literary sources are tagged below the poems.

This book has been like a puzzle to me, like a Rubik's or Cenobite cube, and everything is now falling into place and the door is open for me to explore this diary and story.

Both the book and the album open with "Prayer At The Gate" which is obviously a perfect way to enter both. This also closes the book and is probably an appropriate farewell.

We learn of Ira-Abel and her family and friends before exploring her home, village UNDERWHELEM and surroundings such as the nearby Gore Woods.

We fall into Polly Jean's Dorset dialect and discover words we may not be sure of, but the translation is always nearby so we learn Wyman is Woman, and Wordle (I know) is World. These are in both the opening and closing "Prayer At The Gate".

The glossary is absolutely fascinating, a magie is described as a "chattermag" (if you have ever heard a magpie you will know how perfect this is) and also a "devil's bird".

As I write this I am listening to the album and exploring an absolutely magical realm, I really have unlocked a beautiful treasure chest of words. This book will never go in a bookcase because I want it with me all the time, it is that special to me now.

It is Ira-Abel's last year of childhood, and in some ways that may be seen as a loss but in reality, it is just part of her journey. After this, the next chapter in her life begins.

Though Ira-Abel has journeyed on this book is now part of me forever.