Maggie Mackay is from Dunfermline, and winds family history into her poems. She has been published in a number of print and online poetry magazines and journals. Her previous publications include a pamphlet, The Heart of the Run, and a full collection, A West Coast Psalter.  

In her new collection, The Life and Times of Tommy Mackay, she talks of her father’s longing to walk “into a page like Lucy walking through a wardrobe into a new world in Narnia” (‘Hunger’) - a reference to her much missed and loved father’s devotion to libraries. She invites us into a time portal to early and mid-20th century Paisley and Edinburgh, and we step through the wardrobe to meet an enthralling but human man. She allows us to weave through recollections of her relationship with her dad and their mutual love and respect for each other, as she nibbles at his complicated and flawed life, like a moth among the antique coats in the wardrobe.

Opening up the portal, we witness the birth of her father, while her uncle plays with his wooden train on the farm cottage floor; as a fourteen-year-old working as a “telegraph boy”, finding solace in books; then whizz forward to a young man marching and waving a union banner. As we peek at these moments we can prepare ourselves for her loss: “My father was a Speckled Bear, a zephyr, a working collie, a blue damselfly, a library card.” 

Through one door we see Tommy drinking a dram of whisky, in another we see him in a restaurant with his children. We laugh with the poet when she describes Tommy pretending to conduct classical music, particularly Beethoven. 

We all find out that our parents are not perfect. In some ways it is our own journey that allows us to come to terms with this fact. Among Tommy’s effects when we go through the final wardrobe door, we find women’s names with no explanations. 

For the daughter, questions about her father remain, after he dies far too young of a cardiac arrest. As we leaf with her through her dad’s many books, we feel that we want to find answers in the pages. Grief isn’t just words and this is very apparent in Maggie’s poems: “You stay behind. You stay with me like an ancient philosopher offering solace in oratory.” (‘Dad’).

Maggie Mackay’s The Life and Times of Tommy Mackay is published by Yaffle Press, which is based in Yorkshire and run by husband and wife team Mark and Gill Connors. They organise competitions and workshops and have produced pamphlets, collections, and award-winning anthologies.

Maggie Mackay, The Life and Times of Tommy Mackay, Yaffle Press, £14