Work
Brown's poetry and prose have been described as characterised by "the absence of frills and decoration;the lean simplicity of description, colour shape and action reduced to essentials, which heightens the reality of the thing observed. While "his poems became informed by a unique voice that was his alone, controlled and dispassionate, which allowed every word to play its part in the narrative scheme of the unfolding poem".
Mackay Brown gained most of his inspiration from his native islands, in poems, stories and novels which ranged through time. He drew on the Icelandic Orkneyinga Saga, especially in his novel Magnus. Seamus Heaney said that passed everything "through the eye of the needle of Orkney".
Read more about this topic: George Mackay Brown
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