Salt Songs

Salt Songs is a collection of 51 new poems written in 2021, the centenary of the birth of George Mackay Brown. His work reflects on both change and continuity in the islands where he was born and brought up, and in the wider world. Seamus Heaney remarked that his writing involved 'passing everything through the eye of the needle of Orkney'. That thread has in turn reeled out cross continents and into many languages.

The work here by well-known and widely published writers and by those published here for the first time. By those whose connection with Orkney goes back through generations, and by those who have found a home and sense of belonging here more recently. And by those who visit the islands - whether physically or in their imaginations. These poems are a celebration of the writer whose work has inspired the regard and creative response of so many others.