Garry MacKenzie
Poet / Non-Fiction Writer
I am a poet and non-fiction writer based in Fife. I’m the author of Scotland: A Literary Guide for Travellers (I.B. Tauris / Bloomsbury, 2016), a literary travel guide to the country. I recently completed a book-length poem about a Scottish mountain and its herd of red deer, much of which has been published in anthologies and journals. I have a PhD in contemporary landscape poetry from the University of St Andrews. My poetry has won awards including a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award and the Wigtown Poetry Competition; in 2018 I was shortlisted in the Ginkgo International Poetry Prize for Ecopoetry. My poems have been published in print and online journals including The Clearing, Reliquiae, The Compass Magazine, Glasgow Review of Books and Zoomorphic. I am currently working on two parallel projects – one in poetry and one in non-fiction – exploring the idea of nets. Firstly, this involves writing about how simple technological changes to fishing techniques, including those to do with nets, have led to overfishing around Scotland. I’m exploring parallels between the environmental and cultural costs of this overfishing. I’m also looking at connections between various human and non-human technologies of the net, such as weaving, the internet and cobwebs. Finally, I’m engaging with the phenomenology and psychology of nets, from the satisfaction when a football hits the back of the net, to the more troubled feeling of being trapped in a net which is reported by some psychiatric patients.
Garry is open to exploring any collaborations which might involve poetry. He is especially interested in projects to do with the ecology, social history, conservation, and ownership of the Scottish landscape. He is interested in contributing creative work to a collaborative project and in leading public literature / creative writing workshops.