Glacier—An Icebound View of the Firth of Forth
Garry MacKenzie
Imagine when the Firth of Forth—the estuary at the heart of Scotland—is all glacier, the country around it frozen solid. Imagine, as the ice melts, the shores gradually repopulated by plants, animals, and people, until the Forth is the main conduit between a society with imperial ambitions and the rest of the world.
Garry MacKenzie’s poem-essay about the Firth of Forth flows implacably forward in time, from the Last Ice Age to the present. In its relentless movement, it sweeps along in its path the sedimented layers of history and literature—stories, texts, and fragments that bear witness to the ecological and human histories of Scotland. As the glacier-scoured land takes its modern shape, the poem reflects on what is carried from the past into the present, and asks how poetry can address the complexity—the accumulated guilt and glory—of the past.