George Mackay Brown

Poems describe life on a remote island off the coast of northern Scotland and discuss the seasons, rural life, and religious themes

Selected Poems, 1954-1992

Gavin

Distrust and death but never self-pity; drowning and drama but wise. Of one place’s Vikings, fish, and pain – like Under Milk Wood without the japery and authorial distance. Seal Market is amazing; the Hamnavoe poems are so good I feel I’ve been there (which means I don’t have to go). 

Brown seems stuck writing about the Middle Ages – “what are these red things like tatties? (apples)”– but then, the Middle Ages lasted right through to the 1960s, on Orkney. 

And since “a circle has no beginning or end. The symbol holds: people in AD 2000 are essentially the same as the stone-breakers of 3000 BC.”