Poems of Youth and Turbulence by Peter G Mackie

This collection is one of poems written by Peter G Mackie between 1969 and 1984. He was a youth at the time – the collection spans his work between his early teens and early twenties. And unfortunately, his life was also very turbulent. Mackie was put, mistakenly, into a psychiatric hospital when very young, and ran away from home aged 16. Spells of homelessness, living on a commune, in a bedsit, travelling, and selling The Big Issue have followed. The value of this collection is that it shows the progression of the author’s work as he ages, and it's an unusual progression. The earliest poems can be juvenile, but do have some fascinating imagery. Oddly, Mackie keeps writing about either the weather, or more commonly celestial concepts, stars, planets, nebulae, or molecular physics, electrons, atoms, etc, to the point that the personas narrating the poems are seemingly absent, or only glimpsed. As this collection proceeds, personas and characters in the poems become more firmly established – and in fact, some of the stronger later poems, such as The Hermit, are third person character pieces. Watching the ongoing development in these poems makes for a really fascinating collection, tracking a poet’s growth in very difficult circumstances. [Nat Smith]