SEPTEMBER 26, 2012: Announcing New Website for Poet Mary MacRae
The deeper I go into Mary MacRae’s poems the more spacious my own world becomes. Anne Cluysenaar
The English poet Mary MacRae died of cancer in 2009. Were it not for the love and commitment of her poet-friends at Second Light Network, we might not have the gift of her poetry to savor in our quiet moments. Poet, teacher and consultant to Second Light Network, Myra Schneider wrote and asked me to let you know that they have established a website for Mary.
The wide range of poems in Inside the Brightness of Red includes poignant work written when she was terminally ill but also beautiful lyric poems about childhood, youth, relations with parents, marriage, friendship and her responses to art and nature. Dilys Wood
Mary’s love of life … of nature, birds, flowers, gardens, art and family and friends are evident in precise multicolored layers of her work. She was published in several prestigious literary magazines.
Her enormous warmth and zest for life were balanced with a sensitivity and deep compassion that invited many to confide in her, came into play in her perceptive and incisive criticism and pervaded her poems. Lucy Hamilton
Mary won two poetry prizes: Scintilla magazine’s Long Poem Competition and a joint first prize in the Second Light Poetry Competition. Her work is included in the second Poetry School Anthology, Entering the Tapestry (Enitharmon Press 2003) and in Four Caves of the Heart (Second Light Publications, 2004). Second Light published two collections of Mary’s poems: Inside the Color of Red and As Birds Do.
To read a small selection of Mary MacRae’s poems – of special note is Jury – link HERE. You can buy Mary’s two poetry collections through the website.
With permission I published the following poem before on this blog and I post it again as an example of Mary’s work. Please enjoy, but remember that it is copyrighted with all rights reserved. It belongs to Mary’s estate. This poem is from Inside the Color of Red.
Note: I have also put a link to Mary’s site, Myra’s site, and to Second Light Network in my blogroll under Poets and Friends, which a new and developing section of my blogroll.
ELDER
by Mary MacCrae
·
A breathing space:
the house expands around me,
·
unfolds elastic lungs
drowsing me back
·
to other times and rooms
where I’ve sat alone
writing, as I do now,
when syncope –
·
one two three one two –
breaks in;
·
birdcall’s stained
the half-glazed door with colour,
·
enamelled the elder tree
whose ebony drops
·
hang in rich clusters
on shining scarlet stalks
·
while with one swift stab
the fresh-as-paint
·
starlings get to the heart
of the matter
of matter
·
in a gulp of flesh
and clotted juice that leaves me
·
gasping for words transparent
as glass, as air.
© poem and photograph, Estate of Mary MacRae, all rights reserved