The Seed Beneath the Snow by Joanna Ramsey
There are a good few tomes and takes on the great Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown. Often painting the man in magisterial dourness, with his final decade downplayed next to the earlier years of first drinking, then obsessive writing. Yet it is this later period documented here, within the narrative of a friendship. It seems his sober image was in many ways a professional construct and, refreshingly, Ramsey reveals a kind and relaxed private man – although one plagued by the black dog of depression alongside physical ailments – who gifted his many friends with personal poems (some published here for the first time).
He is viewed purely through this author's lens, with both the focus and limitation this prescribes. At times it feels a hybrid; Ramsey bursting to tell her own story in line with her subject, but often inhibiting herself in this regard, as if reluctant to stray from perceived biographical expectations. After the sad death of the great poet, her prose becomes more insightful, and yes, poetic (she is one) – as if freed from an earlier necessity to diarise the number and frequency of afternoons with George and instead reflect poignantly on what he meant to her. There is value, when touched upon, in the wider setting of Orkney and its community, with George as its modest idol. This may only chronicle his later years, but the smaller cracks still let in the light.
Out now, published by Sandstone Press, RRP £8.99