Publication date: 17 March 2025
ISBN: 978-1-915108-27-2
“There is more wit and invention in a single poem by MacRae than quite a lot of entire bookshelves. Perfectly balanced surreal interludes, bravura exercises in voice, comedy pushed to its harsh extremes, and increasingly stricken, moving. This is not the imagination as an escape, but a negotiation, one that’s still going on, and it’s a privilege to be a part of it as it consoles, troubles and reinvents. Unmissable work.” —Luke Kennard
*
Good Lady
Like you, I am 60% water,
40% unshakable longing.
I am a myth to be busted.
I keep my page with a bookmark
and sometimes grit blows in my eyes.
The majority of my teeth are artificial.
Some days I am forced
to cup my own butt cheek because
there’s no one else around to cup it for me.
I am nervous and filled with rage.
I am a novelty Christmas hat
or a rare, collectible sticker for your album.
I come and go like interior design trends
drifting lightly by like history
or the scent of a struck match.
*
“Darkly hilarious and deliciously surreal, this collection will thrill and unsettle you with the originality and sneaky vigour of its language. If the Mighty Boosh and Paul Celan somehow had a poetic baby, then this would be it. A startling, potent new voice to watch in British poetry.”—Rebecca Tamás
“Marianne MacRae’s poems are among the sharpest and funniest you could hope to read. Their imaginative boldness and their crisp linguistic dexterity are a delight. One is constantly kept on one’s toes through the poetry’s heady swerves and vivid dynamism. The way in which she sounds out the depths through her brilliant surfaces is wonderfully managed. As one of her poems says: ‘Put simply: wow. And wow again’.” —Alan Gillis
“I’ve been trying to think of the perfect way to describe Marianne MacRae’s poetry and what comes to mind are words like: absurd, delicious, bitter-sweet, tickling, sumptuous, barbed, laughing through tears... I keep thinking of those lemon candies that are wildly, devilishly, fabulously sour at first and which turn addictively sweet if you dare to keep sucking on them. The pain here is always askew, the writer pushes herself and the reader to keep glancing above, beyond the easy summing up of experience to something more complex and real. She writes, ‘You should feel free to question continually the space in which you exist.’ and these poems do that, while elbowing you in the ribs. Brilliant.” —JL Williams
Recital by Marianne MacRae
Recital
I am wearing a horse’s head
and still you do not notice me.
The nail varnish on my toes matches
the mint-cream green of your t-shirt.
Neither of us are wearing socks.I’m part of a much larger horse,
you’ll see it soon;
handcrafted bamboo frames
wrinkled with white tissue paper,
a chorus line of horse parts
all singing the same horse song.I spy you in the crowd, spilling
a secret to someone who isn’t me
as we clip-clop on stage
for the opening number.My horse head mouth does not move
but underneath it I am singing
with a mouth so wide and dark
I’m afraid of what will come out of it.*
Fox
squashed meat glistens
against an unbroken
slick of tarmac
a solitary eyeball
lying unhinged
seeks its partner
amongst the debristhe wilting tongue
a pink wing flapping
once lapped
the rippling sheet
of water that searches
the far side of the woodsa fly comes now
to identify the body
lays eggs in folds
of soft midriff
embossed
with tyre tread
cross stitch
*
Unwinding
A half-drunk bottle of Hobgoblin
sat for days afterwards, unmoving
from where you left it, until
a shock of white mould
gathered across the surface.I don’t recall who threw it away
just that you opened it, smiling
on a Friday night after work,
assumed you had time to finish it,
your fingerprints ghosting the brown glass.
Marianne MacRae is a poet and researcher based in Edinburgh. Her work has been widely published in journals including Magma, Ambit and Acumen. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and won a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award for poetry in 2020. Her poem ‘Fox’ won first prize in The Rialto Nature and Place Poetry Competition 2024. Recital is her first full collection.