The last couple of weeks have been exceptionally busy for poet, songwriter and performance artist MacGillivray, aka Kirsten Norrie. Chiefly, recent weeks have seen her release the book The Gaelic Garden of the Dead, on Bloodaxe, alongside a pair of albums of new material.
The Gaelic Garden of the Dead arrived last month (21 February) and is Norrie’s third poetry collection. Three "books of the dead" bound together in one, its contents are split between "an alphabet of trees witness to a highland hanging", pattern poetry dream diagrams, and 35 death-sonnets as an ode to Mary Queen of Scots.
Indeed Mary Queen of Scots is the focus of In My End is My Beginning, one of MacGillivray’s two new albums. In My End is My Beginning is a folk record set to dulcitone, that sees MacGillivray put some of Mary Stuart’s original sonnets to music in both English and French. Alongside putting Stuart’s actual words to music, MacGillivray said she bottled and recorded the air of places that the Stuart monarch was said to have notoriously been.
As well as this, last month also saw MacGillivray release The Last Wolf of Scotland, a recording of her debut poetry collection being read aloud by Ernie LaPointe, spiritual spokesperson of the Lakota people, and the great grandson of Sitting Bull. Especially fitting, as the poetry frequently touches upon LaPointe’s ancestor. MacGillivray makes an appearance on Oran Bagraidh, a multilingual compilation that celebrates the medieval song of the same name, said to be the only surviving example of Galloway Gaelic.
This all precedes Scottish Lost Boys: Seven Renegade Essays, a non-fiction work which will be released later this year. In this, MacGillivray charts figures from Scotland’s historical counterculture, whom she discovered whilst doing a doctoral degree. It will be released on Strange Attractor, and arrive in the latter stages of the Spring.
Information on this and more can be found on MacGillivray can be found on her website.
