Creative Conversations: Jeda Pearl

In Jeda Pearl’s debut collection, Time Cleaves Itself, a disabled Scottish woman of colour invites you into the split and rewoven threads of her 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. Ancestral languages of Scots, Patois, Geordie and English critique ableism, colonialism and Scottish exceptionalism; they ask ‘Who gets the trees?’, honour Caribbean and Scottish heritages and move from the bed as universe to fantastical and science-fictional imaginings. 

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, empathy and resilience.

Jeda Pearl is a Scottish Jamaican writer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. In 2022, she was shortlisted for the Sky Arts RSL Award and longlisted for the Women Poets’ Prize. Art installations include Windrush Legacy Creative Reflections (2023), Caledonian Biotech Library, 3033 (Scottish Storytelling Centre, 2022) and Acts of Observation (Collective, 2021). Performances include StAnza, Hidden Door, Push the Boat Out, Cymera, Loud Poets and Edinburgh International Book Festival. Her poems and short stories are published by New Writing Scotland, Open Book, Not Going Back to Normal, Shoreline of Infinity, Aesthetica, Tapsalteerie, Luna Press and Stewed Rhubarb. Her debut poetry collection, Time Cleaves Itself, is published by Peepal Tree Press. @JedaPearl jedapearl.com

Image: Book cover has swirling contours and ridge lines in pale and deep sky blues meander over 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.'

This event is live in person in the Glasgow University Chapel (accessability information here: https://www.accessable.co.uk/university-of-glasgow/access-guides/university-of-glasgow-memorial-chapel) It is also watchable online on zoom live with the option of captions.

Host or Publisher Creative Writing Admin Team