Remembering George Mackay Brown with Joanna Ramsey

George Mackay Brown is one of Scotland’s best loved authors – a celebrated novelist, dramatist and lyric poet, George was an astonishing twentieth-century voice. The Seed Beneath the Snow is a tender and personal memoir by the poet Joanna Ramsey.

In her marvellous new book Joanna remembers George Mackay Brown, offering a unique insight into the last eight years of his life in Stromness, Orkney, and of the remarkable friendship between them.

Rich with insight, Joanna offers up touching, memorable details of George’s day to day  life in those last years – details not included in any other account. The book provides background to his poem ‘A New Child: ECL 11 June 1993’, which he wrote for Joanna’s daughter, and includes an unpublished poem and birthday acrostics written for Joanna.

In his final years George Mackay Brown rarely travelled beyond Stromness, but many of his friends visited him there; The Seed Beneath the Snow is peopled by George’s other friends, and paints a portrait of a man who remained very dear and important to others until his death, and beyond it.

Joanna Ramsey’s poetry and short fiction have appeared in Chapman, New Writing Scotland and other magazines and anthologies as well as being published in pamphlets by Galdragon Press, this is her first work of Non-Fiction. A poet who lives and works in Orkney, Joanna shares the love of place that so shaped her subject’s life – Join us in celebrating this exquisite memoir and extraordinary man.