George Mackay Brown is recognised as one of Scotland's greatest twentieth-century lyric poets. His work is integral to the flowering of Scottish literature during the last fifty years. Admired by many fellow poets, including Seamus Heaney and Douglas Dunn, his poems are deeply individual and unmistakable in their setting: 'the small green world' of the Orkney Islands where he lived for most of his life, with its elemental forces of sea and sky and Norse and Icelandic ancestry, is brought vividly and memorably to life. Here, his rich and resonant poetry is collected in one volume, making available again many poems that are otherwise out of print.
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Review
'A must-have... [Mackay Brown] transforms the mundane with a luminous
lyricism'
-- The Times, Rachel Campbell-Johnston
`George Mackay Brown really does possess the magician's touch' -- Observer
`The work has both a severe beauty and mischievous wit' -- The Sunday Times
lyricism'
-- The Times, Rachel Campbell-Johnston
`George Mackay Brown really does possess the magician's touch' -- Observer
`The work has both a severe beauty and mischievous wit' -- The Sunday Times
About the Author
Brian Murray read English at Glasgow University and was a teacher in the West of Scotland. With Archie Bevon he has been editing the unpublished and uncollected work of George Mackay Brown - seven volumes to date, with an eighth just completed. Like his daughter Rowena, he was a long-term friend of the writer.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
36 of 37 people found the following review helpful
By Mr. Ian A. Macfarlane
TOP 100 REVIEWER
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.
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful
By Mr. Ian A. Macfarlane
TOP 100 REVIEWER
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.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
By Anne Redmon
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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4.7 out of 5 stars
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fantastic body of work.
I had not encountered a great deal of Mackay Brown's poetry - only a few - and was familiar with his prose. I had no idea how substantial and how wonderful his poetic work was. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Mr. N. B. Liddle
5.0 out of 5 stars
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 12 months ago by PB100
4.0 out of 5 stars
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 on 18 Nov 2010 by Chris Bell
5.0 out of 5 stars
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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