Alastair Mackie: Collected Poems 1954-1994 (Two Ravens Press)

Saturday 15 September 2012

'Thrawn and dour" was how one of his primary teachers described Alastair Mackie to his parents.

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Review: James Robertson

In 1930s Aberdeen this was an observation, not a criticism. There is plenty of both thrawnness and dourness in this big volume, the testament of Mackie's lifelong labour in the field of poetry.

One of the characteristics of Mackie's work is a relentless concern to say what he means – and only that – and to do so without concession to passing fashion. As his father and grandfather, quarrymen both, worked and cut stone all their days, so Mackie (1925–1995) worked and cut words, mostly Scots ones, to build poems that are hard-edged, unsentimental, sometimes angry, often dark and always questioning. His rendition of the maxim associated with Occam's Razor as "Cut out the bloody bulls***", gives an indication of his attitude to life and to writing.

Born and raised in Aberdeen, Mackie saw war service in and around the Mediterranean, returned to his native city to take a degree in English Language and Literature and qualify as a teacher, then worked at Stromness Academy throughout the 1950s, where he formed a friendship with George Mackay Brown. From 1959 to 1983 he taught at the Waid Academy in Anstruther. A foreword by Andrew Greig, and Christopher Rush's own editorial remarks, testify to his inspirational qualities as a teacher, and he encouraged others I have met either to write or to value reading as a life skill. But he suffered years of depression, and was eventually granted early retirement for health reasons. Being thus "released from the treadmill" did not, however, lead to a burst of creative energy. Sometimes it is when writers are most pressed to find time to write that they are at their most productive, and it would appear, looking at the chronology of these poems, that this was true of Alastair Mackie.A combination of natural modesty, constitutional objection to the business of self-promotion, unfortunate publishing experiences, the demands of a full-time job, and poor physical and mental health resulted in him being, as his editor puts it, the "most woefully neglected and undervalued of twentieth-century Scots makars". He was in the second wave of the literary Renaissance initiated by Hugh MacDiarmid, to whom he acknowledged a debt, although his poems reveal a greater influence from classical antiquity and from European writers. But he was also his own man, working in isolation, which was perhaps when he was at his most content. Andrew Greig – "You must get down to the bones of it!" Mackie advised him – gives us a happy image of his teacher, day after day one summer, baking in a deckchair in his garden next to Anstruther's nine-hole golf course, reading and writing among white sheets flapping on the washing-line.Rush's task has been to impose some order on 150 poetry sketch-books, 40 private notebooks, and thousands of other documents, and from this mass extract the material that forms the Collected Poems. The book is divided into four sections. First come the shorter, individual poems in Scots. This is followed by a section, only slightly smaller, of poems in English. The fourth section contains translations, crafted and varied and enthralling, from Baudelaire, Catullus, Horace, Leopardi, Mandelstam, Tyutchev and many others. There is plenty of fine writing in all of these pages, and some vivid images, although sometimes the desire to pack in a punch at the end of a short poem has, to my mind at least, an opposite, diminishing effect. But the true, rich heart of this volume is the third section – 150 pages of longer sequences – and it is here that the quality of Mackie's Scots voice shows to best effect. His was a grounded, everyday Scots, judicially and naturally expanded through his deep reading of earlier makars. With his insistent scepticism, his realism laced with literary allusions, his dark musings on what the hell life and death are all about, the voice comes off the page with sometimes shocking directness.Many of these sequences open with a kind of pause, a drawing of breath. It sometimes takes Mackie a few lines to get into his stride, as if he wants to set the scene, make sure the reader is with him before he goes too deep. In the beautifully balanced sequence, At The Back-End (1975), the opening affectionately references and updates Robert Henryson's autumnal musings: The earth cowps tae the cauld, and wabbit suns. I beek my spleet-new baffies at the loweo the whirrin electric-fire. The sooth windsbrek the sunflooers' necks, the gowfer's shotis sclaffit-That image of Andrew Greig's, of the poet among the washing, is reflected in another fine sequence, Back-Green Odyssey (1971), where Ulysses voyages, mentally at least, in the East Neuk:The air is cowpin pints an nips for free;the sun's a bargain, cheaper nor Majorca.Fowk swap a peely-wally white for broun,like chips, wi troosers or bikinis on.The sardonic tone here is softened by its wit and warmth. Elsewhere, Mackie's pessimism about the language in which he is so adept breaks through:Oor Scots Pegasusis a timmer naigwi a humphy back and cockle een.He ettles tae fleebut his intimmers are fu o the deid-chack.Gin he rins avaHe pechs sair.And spales drap aff like sharn.But the negativity is countered by the clear delight he has in the words he deploys. A message sounds from this vast treasure-house: a language and an attitude may be out of step with the times, but they have not surrendered, only retreated for a while. Alastair Mackie has left us a great legacy, to be savoured and learned from for many years to come, and I am grateful to Christopher Rush and Two Ravens Press for delivering it to us.Alastair Mackie, Collected Poems 1954–1994Edited by Christopher RushTwo Ravens Press, £22

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Alastair Mackie: Collected Poems 1954-1994 (Two Ravens Press)

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