What might it have been like to visit the Braes Hotel, to peer across to the great poet, George Mackay Brown, seated at the window, ale in hand, and then to his lips, looking out to all of Stromness and to the sea?

The first poem I ever read by George Mackay Brown was ‘Wreck of the Archangel’. This poem of tragedy and hope is the most beautiful island poetry I have ever read: 

One thin cry…
…in the lantern pool…
A girl…

‘He endured there…
…in thrall always
To the bounteous terrible harp.’

In George Mackay Brown’s The Travellers (2001) – his last collection – he seems to be preparing himself for the privilege which is his own mortality. Notable poems to this end include ‘The Hamnavoe Man’, ‘Three Songs of Success’ and ‘Ikey: His Will in Winter Written’. And George Mackay Brown writes a poem for his mother, Mhari, who died at one hundred and two years of age. From this poem, ‘Mhari’:

Wintered roots coil
For upsurge, the arm of a girl
Overbrimming, the new light.

From birth to death – the hands – a motif throughout George Mackay Brown’s poems: fishing, plough work, eating, playing, friendship, love, playing music, drinking (from the well, or at the bar), praying, hands still by the fire, or writing poems.

About love, busy are the hands in the poem, ‘Chapel Between Cornfield and Shore’:

A fisher priest offer our spindrift bread
For the hooked hands and harrowed heart of love.

Enlivened by ‘the salty texts’, we meet an old man in the poem, ‘Halcro’:

Don’t go to that old man
With daffodil-shining dove-winged words
To hang beside his clock.
His wall is wild with ships and birds.

Rather:

Give him the salty texts
Chanted in smithy, pub and loan.

The poem ends:

Then see his bone-bright hands
Frail on the chair, grow firm again
In the stillness of old brawls,
Torn nets, sweet dust, and tangled grain.

From the poem, ‘Hamnavoe’:

In the Arctic Whaler
Three blue elbows fall
Regular as waves.

In the poem, ‘Haiku: for The Holy Places – Stromness’:

Stromness, Hamnavoe – ”haven inside the bay”
Twenty stone piers, with boats,
A street uncoiling like a sailor’s rope.

In the poem, ‘The Old Women’, the women in the street “gossiping by the hour” accuse George Mackay Brown of having “the dry-throated curse”. The poet makes a counterpoint:

By every kind of merriment they frown
But I have known a sober grey-eyed boy sail to the lobsters in a storm and drown.

The simplicity of George Mackay Brown’s writing is an expression of life’s sober truth. In the poem, ‘Shipwreck’:

All of the hands stilled by shipwreck.

The emergence of spring is a signifier for the continuation of life and hope. In the poem, ‘Chinoiseries’:

Some say, winter ends in January.
But I think it is February.
February begins to unlatch the gate,
Feeling with frail hands.

Essential as new life and love: pure water to drink. In the trusting hands of George Mackay Brown, in his poem, ‘Condemned Well’:

…the brae
Wet fifteen mouths all summer.
To the sisters of Scorran
The well was lover, the water kisses and secrets.

And further into the poem:

Fool, thou poet, thou rememberest
Ada and Mary and Ann
Who sank bright buckets here.
Poet, those were beautiful girls
Nor could thy net of words hold one.

Water is cupped in the hands like memory in the poem, ‘Carol’:

The war of cloud and summit, other wounds.
Hills cupped their hands
And the rain shone over knuckles of rock…

George Mackay Brown at home on his island, speaks of one lonely fisherman’s sad tale of the heart. From his poem, ‘Bridegroom from the Sea’:

I never stood at that bride’s door.
I footed it home to Hamnavoe.
I said to my boat next morning, 

Susie, sweetheart, forgive me.

From the poem, ‘Gossip in Hamnavoe: About a Girl’, George Mackay Brown marvels at the beauty of a young woman:

His pen flowered among the gales and snow.

From a poem at the pinnacle of deft touch, ‘Cragsman: The Test’:

Before a cragsman can put a ring on a girl’s finger
Let him
Teeter on one leg on a high ledge,
Launch himself
Up and round in a wheel
And stand (fluttering)
Facing the bird-hung crag-face,
The mother, gaunt
Giver of life and death.’

The hands employed, or not, by the task of encircling or circumnavigating; then the hands employed by the task of opening, in this case to be met with death, in the poem, ‘The Sea: Four Elegies – The Door of Water’:

Think of death, how it has many doors.
A child enters the Dove Door
And leaves a small wonderment behind him.

Later in the poem:

For islanders, the Door of Water.
Beyond a lintel carved with beautiful names /
The sea yields to the bone, at last, a meaning.’

The poetry of George Mackay Brown often receives the hands, beyond the here and now, of history – and not only recent history. In the poem, ‘Earl Rognvald Kolson to an Icelandic Poet: AD 1050’:

Here, in September, over stubble,
Burnished hand clasps bone hand.
That treaty, we know, is poetry.

A poet to be remembered for the ages, it must be George Mackay Brown’s pen in the poem, ‘The Poet’s Year’:

He graves names of the dead
Deeper than kirkyard stones.

To warn the writing hand that it must not always be poetry, but sometimes to notify of death, George Mackay Brown writes in his poem, ‘The Death Bird’:

Pen, take no wings on you.

But this task cannot last forever, so alive is the work and witness by the poet. From the poem, ‘The First Castle Edinburgh’:

…The anvil utters bits of
strong sun.

It is this sometimes dangerous task of witness and writing that allows the reader to appreciate, to some small degree, the true beauty and courage of the poet, George Mackay Brown. His selflessness; and his true motivation: love.

From the poem, ‘Hamnavoe’:

In the fire of images
Gladly I put my hand
To save that day for him.

There is no guarantee that a man will find love in his life time. From the poem, ‘Three Songs of Success’:

And broken many poems,
To make a precious thing for a friend:
Then to have her flick a page,
And give her passing beauty back to the sun.

And yet the poet’s touch may be sincere, brave – even immortal. In his poem, ‘Vikings: Three Harp Songs, in A Battle in UIster’, George Mackay Brown writes of Sweyn the skald (poet):

An Irish axe
Struck the right shoulder of Sweyn the skald,
In future, said Sweyn,
I will write my poems with the left hand,
I will sup a sinister broth.’

George Mackay Brown’s wisdom was as great as his gift for poetry – if they should be cleaved. 

Here is a work for ‘poets’ –
Carve the runes
Then be content with silence.

These lines are engraved upon the grave of George Mackay Brown, together with the poem’s four symbols: a sun; a ship; a star; and a cornstalk.

In the past, present, or in the future, emigrants arrive or pass by the shores of Stromness. In George Mackay Brown’s poem, ‘Emigrants: 1886’, we are led by the hands and imagination of a child, for a new life, in this case, to and beyond our homeland country of Australia:

For days Australia filled the horizon.
Strange birds followed the ship.
The children forgot. Their minds
Were scribbled over and again with new scenes.

Upon the island of Stromness, in the poem, ‘Trees’, a granddaughter gifts to her grandfather a new varnished pipe.

He sparks fierce matches at an unbroken pipe.

The grandfather uses it, only to please his granddaughter, though it is difficult to light. The granddaughter is happy. Reminiscing of a wood she walked through some place in her travels, she whispers to Grandad:

I hope I dream about the trees all night.

It is sadly too late for us to travel to Stromness – if our heart’s desire was to meet George Mackay Brown, most likely at Braes Hotel, by the window, drinking ale or whisky, looking out to Stromness and the bounteous terrible harp.

George Mackay Brown was born in 1921; he died in 1996. His poems and our memory of him will sustain each one of us.

Embraced, we may open the collected works of George Mackay Brown – at any page; from any place in the world – for we are in the hands of a great and loving poet.

 Notes:

1) ‘Wreck of the Archangel’, page 223, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

2) The Travellers, 2001, from The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

3) ‘Mhari’, page 443, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

4) ‘Chapel Between Cornfield and Shore’, page 35, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

5) ‘Halcro’, page 27, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

6) ‘Hamnavoe, page 24, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

7) ‘Haiku: for The Holy Places – Stromness’, page 460, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

8) ‘The Old Women’, page 16, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

9) ‘Shipwreck’, page 38, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

10) ‘Chinoiseries’, page 499, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

11) ‘Condemned Well’, page 52, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

12) ‘Carol’, page 67, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

13) ‘Bridgegroom from the Sea, page 462, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

14) ‘Cragsman: The Test’, page 469, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

15) ‘Gossip in Hamnavoe: About a Girl’, page 475, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

16) ‘The Sea: Four Elegies – The Door of Water’, page 169, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

17) ‘Earl Rognvald Kolson to an Icelandic Poet: AD 1050’, page 455, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

18) ‘The Poet’s Year’, page 502, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

19) ‘The Death Bird’, page 26, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

20) ‘The First Castle Edinburgh’, page 456, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

21) ‘Hamnavoe’, page 24, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

22) ‘Three Songs of Success’, page 516, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

23) ‘Vikings: Three Harp Songs – In a Battle in Ulster’, page 167, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

24) ‘A Work for Poets’, page 378, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

25) ‘Emigrants: 1886’, page 459, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

26) ‘The Trees’, page 480, The Collected Poems of George Mackay Brown, Edited by A. Bevan and B. Murray, John Murray Publishers, 2005.

 – Tim Slade

 —————————–

Tim Slade’s debut collection of poems is The Walnut Tree (2021, Bright South). This collection was longlisted for the 2022 Tim Thorne Prize for Poetry, as part of the Tasmanian Literary Awards. Tim’s poems have been widely published, including for the Margaret Reid International Poetry Prize, Australian Poetry Anthology, Cordite, Communion and The Weekend Australian. His poems have been broadcast by the ABC’s Radio National, and at the Tasmanian Poetry Festival. In the 2021 Tasmanian Disability Awards, Tim was a finalist in three categories: Volunteer of the Year, Excellence in Advocacy, and Excellence in the Arts. Tim lives upon Tebrakunna Country in Tasmania’s north-east. Home | Tim Slade (jimdosite.com)

.