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Maggie Mackay
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the poet
After retiring as a support teacher for young people with additional needs, Maggie Mackay took up writing again in 2009. A Masters degree from Manchester Metropolitan University followed – as did her pamphlet The Heart of the Run, and debut collection A West Coast Psalter. Maggie's second collection, The Babel of Human Travel, appeared in 2022. Her poem How to Distil a Guid Scotch Malt was awarded a place in the Poetry Archive’s inaugural WordView 2020 permanent collection, and one of her poems was a runner-up in The Liverpool Prize, judged by Roger McGough. Maggie is a regular reviewer of poetry collections and pamphlets at The Friday Poem.
the poems
Reasons for Time
Travelling to Byres
Farm Cottages
To witness the birth of my father one hundred and four years ago
on that sunny November day
To meet my grandmother humming a baloo to her new son
To hear the milk cows low beyond the limewashed buildings
To walk the fields towards the White Cart, Crookston Castle within sight
To feel the oak barley breeze in my hair
To watch the Clydesdale’s hooves sink as the plough carves into the soil
To smell pure country air
To play with my toddler uncle on the stone floor
with his home-made wooden train
which I have to this day
To run it down the hallway and hear the wheels clatter
as they have for three generations
The Babel
of Human Travel
The day comes when she hears the pasture murmur for the last time, and so/her trunk and her soul head for the/Broomielaw where the ship waits for her coming and the Lord/keeps faith while all manner of Scots are scattered/with all manner of dialects and accents, treasuring them/in this fine, vessel-stranger towards new lives abroad/She waits for a roll call, goes from deck to berth from/dining table thence/to fall upon/her lonely spot and weep the/salt from her pale face/dream of/the final lament her brother played, all/the longing pouring through the/Atlantic waters, that handful of earth/deep in her pocket and/the treasured Christening robe folded where they/packed it with the promise of babies to come. Those too aged waving off and miles away, left/behind. The worn spurtle, flat irons, darning mushroom, cradled too in the hold, as the ship casts off/towards the land of caribou and snowshoes through struggles to/understand othery Baltic tongues which yearn to build/homesteads along riverbanks, seek to befriend the Cree nation, preserve the/songs and stories of home, create new histories of their Manitoba city.
Void
Father hanged himself
perhaps above
the washhouse mangle,
or in the orchard maybe,
dead weight dressed in apple blossom.
You’re wondering if I miss him,
if I miss his hand on my arm,
if his voice is fading.
It’s in the sparrow’s call,
ten chisel clangs,
a bicycle bell.
Publishing credits
Reasons for Time Travelling to Byres Farm Cottages:
exclusive first publication by iamb
The Babel of Human Travel: The Babel of Human Travel
(Impspired Press)
Void: A West Coast Psalter (Kelsay Books)