George Mackay Brown*

George Mackay Brown (1921—1996) is a poet of Scotland’s north coast Orkney Islands. He studied with Edwin Muir at Newbattle Abbey College, near Edinburgh, and earned his MA from the University of Edinburgh, where he did post-graduate research on Gerard Manley Hopkins.

While in Edinburgh he became part of the Milne’s Bar crowd, which included Hugh MacDiarmid and Norman MacCaig. He was briefly engaged to Stella Cartwright — “the muse of Milne’s Bar” — but returned to his hometown of Stromness, where he lived unmarried for the rest of his life.

George Mackay Brown once wrote that his themes were "mainly religious (birth, love, death, resurrection, ceremonies of fishing and agriculture)…"

The following poem is from his collection Carve the Runes and appears in Selected Poems 1952—1992.

Daffodils

Heads skewered with grief
Three Marys at the cross
(Christ was wire and wax
festooned on a dead tree)

Guardians of the rock,
their emerald tapers touch
the pale wick of the sun
and perish before the rose
bleeds on the solstice stone
and the cornstalk unloads
peace from hills of thorn

Spindrifting blossoms
from the gray comber of March
thundering on the world,
splash our rooms coldly with
first grace of light, until
the corn-tides throb, and fields
drown in honey and fleeces

Shawled in radiance
tissue of sun and snow
three bowl-bound daffodils
in the euclidian season
when darkness equals light
and the world’s circle shudders
down to one bleeding point
Mary Mary and Mary
triangle of grief.

*This is the third Kingdom Poets post about George Mackay Brown: first post, second post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the author of five poetry collections including Angelicus (2021, Cascade) ― a book of poems written from the point-of-view of angels. His books are available through Wipf & Stock.

George Mackay Brown*

George Mackay Brown (1921—1996) is a Scottish poet and writer who was born in Stromness, Orkney, and lived there most of his life. Edwin Muir was a significant encourager of his poetry, writing an introduction to his first collection The Storm (1954), and helping him to get his second collection Loaves and Fishes (1959) published.

He received an OBE (Order of the British Empire) in 1974. Brown's 1994 novel Beside the Ocean of Time was nominated for the Booker Prize, and was judged to be the Scottish Book of the Year by the Saltire Society. His Collected Poems appeared in 2005.

A Child's Calendar

No visitors in January
A snowman smokes a cold pipe in the yard.

They stand about like ancient women,
The February hills.
They have seen many a coming and going, the hills.

In March, Moorfea is littered
With knocked-kneed lambs.

Daffodils at the door in April,
Three shawled Marys.
A lark splurges in galilees of sky.

And in May
Peatmen strike the bog with spades,
Summoning black fire,

The June bee
Bumps in the pane with a heavy bag of plunder.

Strangers swarms in July
With cameras, binoculars, bird books.

He thumped the crag in August,
A blind blue whale.

September crofts get wrecked in blond surges.
They struggle, the harvesters,
They drag loaf and ale-kirn into winter.

In October the fishmonger
Argues, pleads, threatens at the shore.

Nothing in November
But tinkers at the door, keening with cans.

Some December midnight
Christ, lord, lie warm in our byre.
Here are stars, an ox, poverty enough.

*This is the second Kingdom Poets post about George Mackay Brown: first post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His latest poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Jenny Robertson

Jenny Robertson is a Scottish writer who I first discovered through her 1989 anthology of Christian poetry, A Touch of Flame (Lion Publishing). She has written many books which fit in intertwining ways into her areas of interest: Children's books, adult novels, poetry, books about eastern European peoples (particularly victims of totalitarianism), the Holocaust, Christianity, and mental health. She and her husband have lived in England, St. Petersburg, Warsaw, and Scotland.

Her poetry books include Beyond The Border, Loss And Language (both from Chapman) Ghetto (Lion Publishing) and Clarissa, or Arrested Development. George Mackay Brown has written, “Jenny Robertson’s verse has its beginnings in a deep well of compassion; and drawn up into sun and wind, each word falls bright and singing upon the stones of our world.”

Corn King

Corn King
---------spring!
leap, leap, Lord of life,
dance, dance, dear delight.

Grain buried deep
today, tomorrow, sleep
---------then
---------lightward,
---------larkward,
---------skyward,
---------Godward
------------------leap
---------bright to death.

Broken Corn King, harvested,
thrashed, ground, milled for bread,
---------at daylight leap
---------from your dark sleep.

Harvester, begin
the dance, the dear delight.
Yielded sheaves, golden bright,
---------a garnered hoard,
welcome their harvest lord;
while corn-fat valleys shout and sing,
---------honouring
the Harvest King,
---------feasting
the harvest home
with broken bread and one cry: Come!

Posted with permission of the poet.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. His new poetry collection, Conspiracy of Light: Poems Inspired by the Legacy of C.S. Lewis, is available from Wipf & Stock as is his earlier award-winning collection, Poiema.

Edwin Muir

Edwin Muir (1887–1959) was born in the Orkney Islands at the northern extremity of Scotland. When he was 14, his family went through a move — which was traumatic for Edwin — from their farm in Orkney to industrial Glasgow. He later described it as like being expelled from Eden into the fallen world — and the journey felt like setting out in 1751, before the industrial revolution, and arriving in Glasgow in 1901. Over the next few years his father, two brothers and his mother would all die.

Muir saw his life as echoing the loss of Eden and a gradual regaining of it — a lifelong spiritual journey. He struggled with the harsh Calvinism of his upbringing — and briefly abandoned faith altogether. Becoming conscious of immortality was an important early step back. He wrote many poems relating to faith and the scriptures. “The Killing” for example paints a picture of the crucifixion:
-------------That was the day they killed the Son of God
-------------On a squat hill-top by Jerusalem.
-------------Zion was bare, her children from their maze
-------------Sucked by the dream of curiosity
-------------Clean through the gates. The very halt and blind
-------------Had somehow got themselves up to the hill...

In the early 1950s Muir was Warden of Newbattle Abbey College near Edinburgh. He became a significant influence and encouragement to the poet George Mackay Brown (also from Orkney) who was a mature student there. In 1955 Edwin Muir became Norton Professor of English at Harvard.

During his lifetime he published seven separate volumes of poetry. In 1965 T.S. Eliot edited and wrote an introduction to Edwin Muir’s Selected Poems.

They could not tell me who should be my lord

They could not tell me who should be my lord,
But I could read from every word they said
The common thought: Perhaps that lord was dead,
And only a story now and a wandering word.
How could I follow a word or serve a fable,
They asked me. `Here are lords a-plenty. Take
Service with one, if only for your sake,
Yet better be your own master if you're able.'
I would rather scour the roads, a masterless dog,
Than take such service, be a public fool,
Obstreperous or tongue-tied, a good rogue,
Than be with those, the clever and the dull,
Who say that lord is dead; when I hear
Daily his dying whisper in my ear.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about Edwin Muir: second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca

George Mackay Brown

Scottish poet George Mackay Brown (1921–1996) is best known for the way he captured the landscape and culture of his home in the Orkney Islands off the extreme north coast of Great Britain. He said, “The essence of Orkney’s magic is silence, loneliness and the deep marvellous rhythms of sea and land, darkness and light.” He did not seek fame, avoided travelling, and saw the poet’s task as “interrogation of silence”.

He was brought up a Presbyterian although, perhaps because of his fascination with history and place, became a Roman Catholic in 1961. An obituary in The Independent said, “Brown practised his faith quietly, but set out his convictions with increasing authority and certainty as he moved into his old age. In Beside the Ocean of Time (1994), his last novel, he achieved such a magisterial summing-up of the purpose and meaning of man’s life that it is difficult to imagine how he could have followed it.”

The following poem demonstrates the subtlety and strength of his poetic voice.

A Poem For Shelter

Who was so rich
He owned diamonds and snowflakes and fire,
The leaf and the forest,
Herring and whale and horizon —
Who had the key to the chamber beyond the stars
And the key of the grave —
Who was sower and seed and bread
Came on a black night
To a poor hovel with a star peeking through rafters
And slept among beasts
And put a sweet cold look on kings and shepherds.

But the children of time, their rooftrees should be strong.

This is the first Kingdom Poets post about George Mackay Brown: second post, third post.

Entry written by D.S. Martin. He is the award-winning author of the poetry collections Poiema (Wipf & Stock) and So The Moon Would Not Be Swallowed (Rubicon Press). They are both available at: www.dsmartin.ca