On 1st August 2025 we had the pleasure of publishing Glacier: An Icebound View of the Firth of Forth by poet Garry MacKenzie.
Imagine when the Firth of Forth—the estuary at the heart of Scotland—is all glacier, the surrounding country 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.
Garry MacKenzie’s book-length poem Ben Dorain: a conversation with a mountain was shortlisted for a Scottish National Book Award and long-listed for the Highland Book Prize. He has published two pamphlets with Clutag Press, and his next collection Firth, a portrait of the human and ecological histories of the Firth of Forth, will be published by The Irish Pages Press in 2026. Glacier is available as a beautiful PDF digital download from our Wind&Bones Books Bookshop here.
You can also read Garry’s guest post on North Sea Poets where he discusses Glacier and the inspiration behind it.
This was our second offering as part of our Wind&Bones Books Shorts series. And we have a really exciting lineup planned for our shorts, including essays, curiosities and fiction by writers we love—things too strange, too wayward, or too fine to find a home elsewhere.
