April 13th 1996 saw the death of the Orkney Poet and writer George Mackay Brown.George Mackay Brown

April 13th 1996 saw the death of the Orkney Poet and writer George Mackay Brown.

George Mackay Brown is perhaps Orkney’s best known author. He was born in Stromness in 1921 and his poetry, plays, novels and short stories continue to have an impact worldwide.

His work was inspired by Orcadian folklore – the myths, legends and sagas - Orkney’s Norse heritage, the natural landscape, his childhood and exploration of his faith. He wrote about his hometown of Stromness and chronicled the lives of the people who lived here and the way of life.

After six years as the Stromness correspondent for the Orkney Herald and a period recovering from tuberculosis, GMB, as he is often referred to in Orkney, from 1951 studied at Newbattle College in Midlothian under warden Edwin Muir, a fellow Orcadian writer. He went on to read English at Edinburgh University, returning to Orkney in 1961.

While in Edinburgh of course he drifted towards the crowd in Milnes Bar and into the company of Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCaig and the likes. He met and fell in love with Stella Cartwright described as the bars muse and she was lover to a number of Scottish poets, they were briefly engaged but kept in touch until she passed away in 1985.

Dubbed by some as the Orkney bard, his first book of poems sold out in days. Despite almost continual ill-health he continued to write and gained numerous prizes for his work. These included the James Tait Memorial Prize for his novel The Golden Bird: Two Orkney Stories. Beside the Ocean of Time was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Scottish Book of the Year title from the Saltire Society. He was awarded the OBE and three honorary degrees.

His weekly column which ran for more than 25 years in The Orcadian from 1971 is in print in book form and gives an insight into his Stromness routines and his observations on a changing Orkney.

George Mackay Brown died in 1996 but his legacy lives on in his words, and in the George Mackay Brown Fellowship. 

https://georgemackaybrownfellowship.com/

Shroud.

Seven threads make the shroud,

The white thread,

A green corn thread,

A blue fish thread,

A red stitch, rut and rieving and wrath,

A grey thread

(All winter failing hand falleth on wheel)

The black thread,

And a thread too bright for the eye.

.

George Mackay Brown