P.J. Harvey, singer turned poet

By Hazel Sheffield

P.J. Harvey recently celebrated her 46th birthday. But she did not have a quiet meal with friends, or go for a walk on the beach at home in Bridport, Dorset, and look at the stars. She did something she has never done in more than 25 years as a professional musician: she stood onstage at the Southbank Centre in London and recited her own poetry.

In flat, devastated tones, she read from “The Ministry of Social Affairs”, a poem about Afghanistan: “There must be something in the air/there is fighting everywhere.” When it was done she strapped on her guitar and played the same poem as a bludgeoning rock song, replacing fear with fury. Harvey’s poems have just been published by Bloomsbury in a collection called “The Hollow of the Hand” alongside photography by Seamus Murphy. Over two nights at the London Literary Festival they presented poems, photos and ten new songs that will become P.J. Harvey’s next album.