Garry MacKenzie

Garry MacKenzie is a prizewinning poet and nonfiction writer whose work focuses on landscape and the environment. His nonfiction book Scotland: A Literary Guide for Travellers (I.B. Tauris / Bloomsbury, 2016) explores the literary, historical and cultural associations of locations around Scotland, from city streets to remote islands. Focusing on the places which inspired writers ranging from Samuel Johnson to Jackie Kay, it is both an introduction to Scottish literature and a travel guide. Garry MacKenzie’s book-length poem Ben Dorain: A Conversation with a Mountain (The Irish Pages Press, 2021) combines his experimental translation of an eighteenth-century Gaelic poem, Duncan Ban MacIntyre’s Praise of Ben Dorain, with original material drawing on subjects including contemporary ecology and environmental philosophy, to create a conversation between MacIntyre’s poem and the modern world. In 2021 Ben Dorain was shortlisted for a Scottish National Book award and longlisted for the Highland Book prize.

Garry MacKenzie’s poems and essays have been published in anthologies and journals including Antlers of Water, Irish Pages and Dark Mountain. He is a winner of the Wigtown Poetry Competition and the Robert McLellan Poetry Competition. In 2009 he was given a New Writers Award by the Scottish Book Trust, and in 2020 he was shortlisted for an Arts Foundation Fellowship in Environmental Writing.

Garry MacKenzie has a PhD in contemporary landscape poetry from the University of St Andrews, and has tutored in literature and creative writing at universities and colleges. He teaches community classes and residential courses for adults.