Orkney’s Prospero (2019) [podcast]

“Orkney’s Prospero.” Episode 11 of a series of podcasts on the Slightly Foxed website.

Maggie Fergusson (GMB’s biographer) and Colin Waters (of the Scottish Poetry Library) “bring to light a writer who was at once a solitary soul and a raconteur, a lover and a drinker, a member of the Edinburgh literati yet fame-shy. From the oft-recited ‘Hamnavoe’ to the Booker-nominated Beside the Ocean of Time Mackay Brown’s work sings of his island roots, interweaving life and social history with myth and legend.”

The interview runs from 7:15 to 24:40 on the podcast.

Orcadian Poet (1971) [recording]

The Orcadian Poet George Mackay Brown Reads His Poems and a Story. Baile Átha Cliath, Eire: Claddagh Records, 1971.

An LP recorded in Stromness, July 1971. The story is “Witch” (excerpts). The poems are: “The Old Woman,” “The Death of Peter Essen,” “The Stranger,” “Hamnavoe,” “Elegy,” “Chapel Between Cornfield and Shore,” “The Poet,” “Old Fisherman with Guitar,” “Hamnavoe Market,” “Country Girl,” “The Sailor, the Old Woman and the Girl,” “Stations of the Cross,” “Taxman,” “Fiddlers at the Wedding,” “Foldings,” “The Laird’s Falcon,” A Child’s Calendar,” “Girl,” “Fisherman’s Bride,” “The Coat,” “Sea Orpheus,” “Tinkers,” “Runes from the Island of Horses,” and “Kirkyard.”

In the sleeve notes, GMB comments on the Scandinavian and Celtic influences on his poetry. “I try often to suggest the swift dangerous rhythms of the sea, and (even more important) the slow dark fruitful rhythm of the earth from seedtime to harvest. . . . The bread that is the result of the crofter’s hard labour on the earth is a recurring symbol: meaning the simple nourishment of the body, and the mysterious sign of the godhead.”

Copies: British Library — National Library of Scotland [LP.516]. — Scottish Poetry Library [st 3.Bro.].

GMB — Selected Poems, 1954–1992 (1996)

GMB. Selected Poems, 1954–1992. London: John Murray, 1996.

Paperback. Dedicated to David Dixon. The frontispiece is a map of Orkney.

“This new edition of George Mackay Brown’s Selected Poems includes more poems than any previous selection. It contains, in addition to poems from his first seven collections and the delightful Ballad of John Barleycorn, the texts of three sequences of poems, Tryst on Egilsay, Foresterhill and Brodgar Poems, each of which has so far only been published as a private press book. This work, together with the author’s most recent collections, The Wreck of the Archangel (1989) and Following a Lark (1996), includes all the poems, from more than forty years’ work, that he chose to keep in print” (prefatory note, p. [i]).

“All the poems in this collection were written in the Orkney islands, off northern Scotland. ¶ More poetry has come out of Orkney than perhaps any community of comparative size in the world” (from GMB’s introduction, dated Stromness, February 1996, p. [xi]).

Contents: Introduction ¶ From The Storm (1954): The Storm — The Exile — Song: Further than Hoy ¶ From Loaves and Fishes (1959): The Old Women — The Death of Peter Esson — Hamnavoe — The Lodging — Elegy — Chapel between Cornfield and Shore, Stromness — Daffodils ¶ From The Year of the Whale (1965): Shipwreck — Culloden: The Last Battle — Horseman and Seals, Birsay — The Abbot — The Poet — Farm Labourer —Old Fisherman with Guitar — The Year of the Whale — Trout Fisher — Hamnavoe Market — The Hawk ¶ From An Orkney Tapestry (1969): The Ballad of John Barleycorn ¶ From Poems New and Selected (1971): The Five Voyages of Arnor [The Five Voyages of Arnor, Our Lady of the Waves, Viking Testament] — Carol — Kirkyard — Runes from a Holy Island — Runes from the Island of Horses ¶ From Fishermen with Ploughs (1971): Witch — A Reel of Seven Fishermen — Taxman — Buonaparte, the Laird, and the Volunteers — The Laird — Crofter’s Death — Peat Cutting — Ikey Crosses the Ward Hill to the Spanish Wreck — Ploughman and the Whales — Love Letter — Haddock Fishermen — The Laird’s Falcon — Sea Runes — The Scarecrow in the Schoolmaster’s Oats — A Child’s Calendar — Beachcomber — Old Man — Roads — Butter — The Coward — Hill Runes — The Big Wind — Dead Fires ¶ From Winterfold (1976): The Golden Door: Three Kings — Yule — A Poem for Shelter — Tea Poems [Chinaman, Smugglers, Afternoon Tea] — April the Sixteenth — Twelfth-Century Norse Lyrics — Vikings: Two Harp Songs [Bjorn the Shetlander, Sails to Largs, 1263, and The New Skipper] — The Escape of the Hart — Eynhallow: Crofter and Monastery — Stations of the Cross [From Stone to Thorn, Pilate, The Stone Cross, Sea Village: Shetland, Carpenter, A Joyful Mystery, The House] ¶ From Voyages (1983): Seal Island Anthology, 1875 — Bird in the Lighted Hall — Magi — Sonnet: Hamnavoe Market — Voyager — Stars: A Christmas Patchwork — Vinland — Lighting Candles in Midwinter — The Star to Every Wandering Barque — Orkneymen at Clontarf, AD 1014 — William and Mareon Clark: First Innkeepers in Hamnavoe [The Opening of the Tavern, 1496, Sickness, In Memoriam] — Countryman ¶ Tryst on Egilsay (1989): Earl Hakon — Helmsman — The Killers — The Death of Magnus — The Egilsay Priest — The Men of Egilsay — The Two Tinkers ¶ Foresterhill (1992) ¶ Brodgar Poems (1992) ¶ Index of first lines.

Reviews: Robert Nye, Scotsman, 16 November 1996, p. 23. — Dennis O’Driscoll, Poetry Review 37 (Autumn, 1997): 54–55. — Iain Galbraith, Chapman, nos. 89–90 (1998): 191.

Copies: Bodleian Library. — National Library of Scotland.

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American edition (1996):

GMB. Selected Poems, 1954–1992. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1996.

Reviews: Ray Olson, Booklist 93, no. 5 (November 1996): 475. — Christian Wiman, “So Fierce and Sweet the Song: George Mackay Brown,” Sewanee Review 105, no. 2 (Spring, 1997): 257–60.  —Richard Henry, World Literature Today 71, no. 3 (Summer, 1997): 593. — Robert Haas, Washington Post, 7 September 1997 [Web].

Copy: Library of Congress.

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Braille edition (1996?):

GMB. Selected Poems, 1954–1996. 2 vols. Peterborough: Royal National Institute for the Blind, [1996?].

Copy: Scottish Poetry Library.

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Ebook (2014):

GMB. Selected Poems, 1954–1992. London: John Murray, 2014.

Copy: National Library of Scotland.

Conn — George Mackay Brown: A Personal Appreciation (July 1996)

Conn, Stewart. “George Mackay Brown: A Personal Appreciation.” Scottish Poetry Library Newsletter, no. 27 (July 1996): 11.

“He spent the bulk of his life moored to his beloved Orkney, but his imagination spanned the globe. Bard and storyteller, he spellbindingly merges myth and symbol, sacred and pagan, past and present.” Tessa Ransford’s introductory note comments that GMB “is a living presence in the Scottish Poetry Library, which he always warmly supported. His books are much sought and borrowed. . . .”

Hershaw — Postcairds (2015)

Hershaw, William. Postcairds fae Woodwick Mill: Orkney Poems in Scots. Ochtertyre: Grace Note Publications, 2015.

See “Seivin Verses for GMB,” p. 9.

Illustrated by Brendan McCluskey. There is a recorded version on the Scottish Poetry Library website.

Farewell to Stromness (23 June 1997) [radio]

“Farewell to Stromness.” Radio 3, 23 June 1997, 9:30–10:00 p.m.

At the St. Magnus Festival, “six distinguished poets . . . read their own specially commissioned tributes to writer George Mackay Brown, who died last year. The poets are Seamus Heaney, lain Crichton Smith, Liz Lochhead , Stewart Conn, Edwin Morgan, and Kenneth White.”

Recordings: British Library. — Scottish Poetry Library (Audio Tapes, Spoken Word – Reference st 3.Bro).