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"* 'Extraordinarily effective' - Robert McCrum, The Observer * 'A brilliant writer' - Spectator * 'George Mackay Brown really does possess the magician's touch' - Observer * 'A dazzling writer' - The Guardian * 'Undoubtedly the most important document of his work to be produced so far.' - Shetland Times, Malachy Tallack. * 'George Mackay Brown has added uniquely and steadfastly to the riches of poetry in English: his sense of the world and his way with words are powerfully at one with each other' - Seamus Heaney * 'The Collected Poems show the range and depth of his work, the beauty of it, "the undersong of terrible holy joy'" - Scotsman 30/07/2005 * 'The reader embarks on a voyage - which is how Mackay Brown himself saw his work - through the elemental world of his cliff-girt, craggy isles.' - The Times, Rachel Campbell-Johnston * 'Practically every poem has the bite of originality' - TLS 12/08/2005 * 'Mackay Brown was a bardic, celebratory poet who swathed all that he wrote about in a kind of caul of sacredness' - Independent, Michael Glover 02/12/2005"
The Sunday Times
`The work has both a severe beauty and mischievous wit'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
33 of 34 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The modest Orkney poet George Mackay Brown was faithful throughout his writing life to the central themes he explored - the land and sea, the cycle of the seasons, the relationship between man and the world around him, the power and meaning of stories, the spiritual dimension which made sense, to him, of all these things. I have read his poems over many years without quite realising what an impressive body of work they came to form. It is wonderful to come across this volume which so amply demonstrates this. This is art concealing art, the power of understatement, less meaning more, and always his love of the Orkneys, land, sea, customs, history and legends. It's a marvellous book and a fine memorial to a lovable writer who fully deserves such a tribute.
25 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
George Mackay Brown died at the age of 74 in the 1990s. He lived very nearly all of his life on the Orkney Islands, where he was born, and most of his poetry is a kind of dialogue between poet and place, with the past as real a presence as the present. He wanted no more than to be in the place where he was born and to commune with its physical reality, its light, its sunsets, its storms, its people, their customs, its folk lore and its history. He had a spell down in Edinburgh and one visit, I think, to London, but he was not adventurous in any sense that most people would recognise. His adventures were of the imagination and the spirit and their medium of exression were prose and poetry. His novels and short stories, his column for 'The Orcadian' and above all his poetry stand as his memorial ; and we learn from Maggie Fergusson's recent biography that his poetry was ranked most highly by Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and others. It is unique and life-enhancing, this poetry of the Islands, and it is wonderful to have it in one well-presented volume as here. It is very easy to represent his work as insular - by definition, that is indeed what most of it was. But I would suggest that every human feeling and longing is here, and the beauty of the imagery, the old stories, the patterns of verse, the varied repetitions, the warmth and coldness, involvement and detachment of the lines embody human life and relationships between man and man and man and his surroundings as truly as any body of modern poetry can be said to do. This is a wonderful book offering a lifetime's observation and wisdom in memorable forms and language, and it will give pleasure to readers for many lifetimes to come.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
George Mackay Brown lived and wrote in the Orkneys, the upper margin of Britain. With the publication of this remarkable volume he should never be marginalized again. These poems have been my constant companion for weeks. What I read in the morning stays with me all day - a phrase will insist itself on me, or a compelling image.To be fair, I have visited the Orkneys many times and perhaps for that reason can see the landscape into which he breathes such life. I know the history of the islands which he wonderfully evokes, especially its Norse heritage. Like Brown, I am a Catholic, thus his inner discourse of mystery and redemption has great resonance for me . I believe, though, that if I brought neither of these elements to the reading of his Collected Poems I would feel that I had stumbled on greatness. This is a major writer and one who has defined the poet's true task as 'the interrogation of silence'.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Great poetry
Has many very beutiful poems that gives one a real sense of place and a of the depth of the apparently simple and everyday.
Published 18 days ago by PB100
Grace, warmth, beauty, tenderness and comedy: Extraordinary collection
There are so many poems in this collection, it probably represents a full year's reading. Those who read poems regularly will know that - unlike novels, plays and short stories -... Read more
Published 18 months ago by Chris Bell
Hamnavoe & Beyond
Many people, like myself, will have been introduced to the poet's work via 'Hamnavoe', his elegaic portrait of his home town Stromness, where we follow his father delivering the... Read more
Published on 2 July 2009 by W. Songsmith
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