PJ Harvey is giving fans a new way to peer inside her soul. The "Down By The Water" singer will be releasing a poetry book, The Hollow of the Hand, on October 20, 2015.
"Gathering information from secondary sources felt too far removed for what I was trying to write about," she said in a press release (via SPIN). "I wanted to smell the air, feel the soil, and meet the people of the countries I was fascinated with. My friend Seamus Murphy and I agreed to grow a project together — I would collect words, he would collect pictures, following our instincts on where we should go."
Don't expect the published work to dwell too much on feelings, though.
"Emotions are something that I don't find it easy to talk about," she told The Guardian this year. "I'm useless at it. Maybe that's one reason why I'd much rather talk about records or recording techniques or sheep-dipping."
The 45-year-old pointed out that she doesn't include lyrics sheets in any of her albums.
"It seems silly to me, 'cos they're not poetry, they're not meant to be read," she said. "They're meant to be heard with the music. If I buy an album with a lyric sheet, I always end up reading it the first few times I listen, and you don't even listen to the music properly. A song is a song, not a poem or a play."
Her most recent album, Let England Shake, was released in 2011. A new studio effort has not been announced, but Harvey appears to enjoy playing live shows more, anyway.
"It's the thrill of it," she said. "Like a fairground ride or something. It's very nerve-wracking, but when it's a good night, I understand why I'm doing it. It's the biggest high, better than any drug."
