GMB portrait by Fred Schley
painted in 1998 from photographs by Gunnie Moberg and Fred Schley
oil on canvas 50 x 60 cms
One afternoon in May I’ve booked
my passage on a boat
from Scrabster to your Hamnavoe,
the place you lived and wrote.
The town is looking pretty in
its light-green, springtime dress;
the skies are blue in tribute to
the bard that sang Stromness.
That’s a very nice wee plaque they’ve pegged
upon your old abode;
and not that wee, in fact, as I
can read it from the road.
It’s not all that impressive though,
this dreary council house;
it’s funny you were happy to
personify a mouse.
The owl’s inclined to hoot before it flies,
the dog intent on barking till it dies,
the bell designed for ringing.
As bows are meant to shoot a thrilling rain,
and arrows find their mark or fall in vain,
so truth is bent on singing.
There’s a mist around the hilltops now,
a drizzle in the town;
I kid myself I sense your ghost,
George Mackay Brown.
You take me down the pier to watch
the seagulls wheeling free,
then lead me through their yammer to
the chuckles of the sea.
The owl’s inclined to hoot before it flies,
the dog intent on barking till it dies,
the bell designed for ringing.
As bows are meant to shoot a thrilling rain,
and arrows find their mark or fall in vain,
so truth is bent on singing.
I sang this for my first-year students last week. They’re in the middle of a course on GMB. We started with a poem, “The Stranger”, where they had to write a fourth verse from the POV of the stranger, then four stories from A Calendar of Love and two from A Time to Keep and Other Stories.
gists 
I find this quite lovely, Duncan.
That’s good to hear, Robert!
For anyone wanting a sensible appraisal of George Mackay Brown’s poetry, I would recommend Douglas Dunn’s.
Lovely to see something about GMB, one of my favorite poets. I keep turning friends on to his writing, and they keep saying things like, This is great! How come I didn’t know about this before!
I’ve written at least a couple of poems inspired by or dedicated to GMB. Someday I want to get to Orkney, for three things: GMB, the standing stones, and the whiskey. Someday.
Cheers, Art. I’ll continue to try to proselytise my students later today. Poetry becomes more concrete when you can put a face on it.
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