A.M.O. Mohamed
The internationally celebrated poet, novelist and playwright is revealed in this celebration and retrospective as 'Islandman', chronicler of Orkney lore and champion of the islands' particular enchantment. His weekly columns, for over 50 years the beating heart of the Orkney Herald and the Orcadian, are here selected for their peculiar mix of fact and fancy. Stone-Age drunks, New-Age tourists, fisherman, whalers, ancestors and friends weave in and out of these Orkney stories, wandering into significance like people accidentally caught on camera. And the places where these folk come together - smithy, inn, kirk, cattle market - become 'little theatres of poetry' as much in Mackay Brown's prose as in his verse. The poems in this book, many previously unpublished, may represent 'work in progress', but in revealing the intimacy between journalist and poet the editors are surely right in thinking that Islandman would not have been too displeased. (Kirkus UK)