© Gunnie Moberg, Stromness, Orkney (from Orkney: Pictures and Poems, 1996)
Pebbles in Ice
A glacier dragged us
All the way from the north.
Did he dump us like a dustman?
No, he dropped us
Here, from his hand, like a
jeweller.
© George Mackay Brown (from Orkney: Pictures and Poems, 1996)
Little could Gunnie Moberg know, that Orkney: Pictures and Poems would become the swan song of the poet with whom she'd already collaborated on several book projects in the 1980s, when she asked him, in the mid-nineties, if he would write short captions for those photographs that were to be gathered together for a new book accompaning a retrospective exhibition at Piers Arts Centre in Stromness.
His reply, that he thought he could find something to say about them, turned out to be quite an understatement...
Over a period of about half a year, both looked at a display of the pictures set up in his sitting room together. All this time, she had no idea that he was not writing captions, but remarkable poems instead.
The 48 poems, that Brown surprised her with, interact marvelously with Moberg's photographic aptitude at capturing patterns and textures in the natural world. The project turned into a beautiful combination of the word and the visual.
He died before the book was published, but the collaboration was complete, and has been published as Orkney: Pictures and Poems (1996, hardcover and paperback) by Colin Baxter Photography Ltd, Scotland.
GMB was not only a gifted storyteller, but a very perceptive poet as well. The remarkable interaction documented in this book is a moving closure to his life as "the singer of the islands".
He left behind a nourishing and astonishing body of work, a gift that remains well-worth exploring, and that the generations that follow should continue to treasure.
LINKS
Website Colin Baxter Photography Ltd (Publisher of Orkney: Pictures and Poems)
GMB official author site (very good, has an exhaustive bibliography!)
The Independent - Obituary Gunnie Moberg
Shetland News - Obituary Gunnie Moberg
The Times Obituary - Gunnie Moberg
No comments:
Post a Comment