'Towards Green April Harps'
     from Orkney: Pictures and Poems

The 1990's began well with the publication of a lighthearted collection of letters to Gypsy, the cat.  George wrote to Gypsy every week at one time, a postcard from Shetland and so on, and she stayed with him at Mayburn Court from time to time, exerting her tyrant charm over George who became instantly malleable in her presence. In the evenings, she stole his rocking chair.  She was so beautiful he hadn't the heart to turn her out.  Her history and every day life unfolds in the pages of Letters to Gypsy. 

Limited editions followed, In the Margins of a Shakespeare and The Brodgar Poems.  He wrote his usual column for the Orcadian from his hospital bed.  Away in Aberdeen for treatment, he was missing Orkney and the May profusion of wild flowers.  He always loved May for the burgeoning sense of youth it brought, even in old age.  But in his imagination there were riches still to pour out, and he wrote a series of poems Foresterhill about the fictional medieval beginnings of the hospital.   

In late 1990 he took up a story whose birth had been interrupted by ill health.  The images of Vinland came streaming forth, and in 1992 his fourth novel was published to some acclaim.  'A fascinating emotional odyssey, a novel with tone and integrity which cuts surprisingly deep' wrote David Robson of the Sunday Telegraph.

George regretted that as he got older he could no longer reply to every letter he got and still have reserves enough of time and energy to work at other writing.  He found those things easily dealt with in the past became more feared; rats getting into the house, a snowfall which once had brought delight, a storm echoing in the chimney made him feel uncomfortable.

He sensed a withdrawing in himself, just as the light lessens at the close of the year.  And though friends became more important to him, silence – always desirable – became more necessary.   The racket of modern life had become a trial and he feared the loss of  natural sounds and silences as they became swallowed up in the racket.  His appreciation of silence was not simply the rumblings of an old man against the modern world.  It had deeper significance for him.  Silence presented a way of communing with nature and with spirit.  Life is a brief stir between silences.

In October 1991, George turned 70.  Looking back over the decades he says that by the 1980's writing had become a kind of drug without which life would have been meaningless.  And as reading became less easy – the plethora of new books rendered choice difficult – he re-read old favourites, and writing became more of a joy.

His Selected Poems 1954-83 came out that year, and Celtic Cross Press had begun publishing special collections of poems with illustrations by Rosemary Roberts: The Lost Village and Orfeo. 

There are small allusions in his autobiography and elsewhere to depression of Wordsworthian and Hokinesque proportions. There is a longing for oblivion when this happens, and yet his sense of humanity and connection prevails.  He saw his suffering as part of the suffering of the world, not comparing but sharing with an AIDS patient, or a child victim of war.  He found comfort in the Mass which reaffirms Christ's suffering and sacrifice, describing even the simplest Mass as the most beautiful event he could imagine.

The third book of collected journalistic essays Rockpools and Daffodils was published in 1992, covering the years 1979 to 1991.  Even after the success of Letters from Hamnavoe and Under Brinkie's Brae, he still sounds slightly surprised that anyone would want to publish such a collection, let alone read it.  

A new novel Beside the Ocean of Time was published in 1994, judged the Scottish Book of the Year by the Saltire Society and shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

Of 1993, he wrote that more poems than ever came, 'heptahedrons' or seven-leaf poems.  He thought a few of them as good as anything he'd ever written.  Some of these were published in a new collection Following a Lark in 1996:  St Peter and Paul, February, Daffodil Time, Easter in an Island  and others.  He believed in the extraordinary power of the number seven in writing a story or poem; seven verses enabling him to look at the theme from different viewpoints.  In the introduction to Following a Lark he clearly expresses his aim in writing some of poems in praise of the light, and in his own way glorifies the Light behind the light.  Perhaps it was the knowledge of approaching silence which allowed him to give his natural mystical feelings more overt expression. 

Illnesses also heightened his awareness that he was coming to the end of his life, and it shows in some poems.  From An Old Man in July, written in 1994: 

                        Bairn-coat to shroud
                           Near the end of the road
                           The wind of before and after
                        Begins to shake the tatters of a man's life. 

The enlarged version of Selected Poems also came out in 1996, taking in the newer poem cycles Tryst on Egilsay, Foresterhill and The Brodgar Poems, as well as one or two other poems from previous collections. 

The same year, a new venture; he worked on a set of photographs taken by Gunnie Moberg.  Although they had worked together in the past, Gunnie had illustrated his books.  This time he wrote new poems inspired by her images. Sadly, he didn't see the result of their joint labours, Orkney:  Pictures and Poems. The dedication reads:  'In Memory of George Mackay Brown; you have inspired and touched us all.  Thank you.'

George wrote his last column for the Orcadian just a week before he died as the first signs of Spring appeared.  April was a month he loved; for him even the word April was like a poem, and it was a month tasting of childhood.   

With his favourite wayside daffodils saluting the cortege, George's family and friends buried him, fittingly, on St Magnus Day, 16^th April 1996.  A requiem mass took place in St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, a coming together of Catholic and Protestant perhaps for the first time in that place.  A plaque is engraved for him in what has become the writers' and artists' corner. 

His gravestone at Warbeth just outside Stromness, has the perfect summation of his life in the  concluding lines of the last poem in the final collection published in his lifetime:  

Carve the runes
            Then be content with silence. 

Postscript

Since George's death the literary executors, Archie Bevan and Brian Murray, have produced – with dedication and sensitivity – several new volumes of his work, as well as some reprints in paperback.

The manuscript of his autobiography For the Islands I Sing was found among his papers, and appeared the year after his death, 1997.  It was largely written in 1985, an appendix added in 1993, a summing up of a marvellous life of writing. 

One of George's finest collections of stories The Island of the Women, appeared in 1998.  Six stories celebrating sea and land, voyage and homecoming, doers and dreamers.  Euan Cameron of the Sunday Times wrote that George was 'able to articulate in language what most of us can only dimly glimpse.' 

Northern Lights:  a poet's sources, published in 1999, is a gathering of George's writings from his earliest under the name of Islandman to the last piece he wrote for the Orcadian in April 1996.  Spanning fifty years, these pieces offer a fascinating glimpse into his development as a writer.  There is no less delight in his native land at the end of his writing as he speaks of the beauty of April in the islands, the final words he wrote.  This book, along with Letters from Hamnavoe, Under Brinkie's Brae and Rockpools and Daffodils complete the picture of his journalistic writing, as well as giving tantalising glimpses into his poetry and creative prose. A chapter in Northern Light on each of his parents is his touching memorial to them.

More recently Travellers came out in 2001, poems largely unpublished in collection. There is one exception, the out of print and much sought-after December Day, Hoy Sound, resurrected from that first collection published by Hogarth, Loaves and Fishes.

Apart from these books published for the Estate of George Mackay Brown by John Murray, other publishers have continued bringing George's work to the public.  Illustrated short stories, The Sixth Station, and The Rose Tree.  Illustrated poems in Water, and Stained Glass Windows, a few bilingual collections.  Letters from Hamnavoe and Under Brinkie's Brae are reissued in paperback.  The list will grow for some time to come, a celebration of one of Britain's most gentle, insightful poets whose Gaelic roots provided resonance and music to lift his words to reveal the marvellous in the ordinary.

                                 We may note, page by page, the new
                                 And the old works of time; how all
                                           Fall into ruins, or go dancing
                                           Towards green April harps.
                                           Forever, somewhere, are joy and dancing.