Winter and Christmas Poems

George Mackay Brown lived and worked all his life in Stromness on Orkney: the islands being the setting for the huge and immensely rich body of work that he left behind at his death in 1996.

Many of Mackay Brown's poems are set in the winter months: indeed he seems to have drawn great inspiration from the dark and short days around Christmas and the New Year. We have made here a selection of some of the most evocative,