Tom Pow introducing Don
McKay
Scottish poet Tom Pow introduces the Canadian
poet Don Mckay
Tom Pow (Scotland)
Tom Pow was born in Edinburgh, and studied at the University of
St Andrews. He has held a number of teaching and creative writing
posts, among them the Scottish/Canadian Writing Fellow at the University
of Alberta in Edmonton and the first Writer in Residence at the
Edinburgh International Book Festival
His latest collection of poetry, Landscapes and Legacies,
was shortlisted for the Scottish Book of the Year award. As well
as three other collections, including Red Letter Day (Bloodaxe),
he has written radio plays, a number of of children's books and
a travel book about Peru. He is currently Head of Creative and
Cultural Studies at Glasgow University Crichton Campus in Dumfries,
and also runs Cacafuego Press with artist Hugh Bryden.
…introducing Don McKay (Canada)
 In
'Fridge Nocturne', a short poem near the beginning of Don McKay's
selected poems, the sleepless poet lies listening to the sound
of his fridge, 'the old / armless weeping
willow of the kitchen'.
The fridge's 'Humble murmur' brings to his mind several distant
rivers—'the Saugeen, the Goulais / the Raisin'.
The permeability of the border between the domestic world and the
wilderness which lies beyond it marks a landscape whose vastness
teaches early that, 'Lonely is a knife whose handle fits the mind/too
well, its oldest and most hospitable friend' ('Nocturnal Animals').
However, 'There is a loneliness / which must be entered rather
than resolved' ('On Leaving') and to enter the wilderness
with Don McKay is to have the sharpest, most informed and responsive
guide.
›
Read more by Tom Pow on Don Mckay
› Read
poems by Don Mackay
  
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