Pier Arts Centre, Stromness

I was in Stromness in Orkney for the first time ever  this morning and I wanted to make sure that I visited the Pier, about which I had heard so much.

It is a wonderful place, as is the town which was exactly as I expected considering that I have been reading   with great enthusiasm and admiration the work of George MacKay Brown since I was at University.  MacKay Brown was a strong poet of place and this was his place.

The town is also instantly familiar from his weekly Orcadian column,   "Letters from Hamnavoe".

So it was good to make that connecton (at last !) and also - the purpose of my visit - to see Heriot Watt University's Centre for Island Technology, one of the key academic players in the development of marine renewables.      

You can hear George MacKay Brown read five of his poems (unusually because he did not read in public) and find out more at the Poetry Archive website.   And you can listen to Peter Maxwell Davies' "Farewell to Stromness" - which I had playing in the car on the way across Orkney - in several You Tube performances, of which this is one.