1864. In a Santa Fe gulley, scalped Scots thirteen-year-old Robert McGee lies bleeding to death. The Last Wolf of Scotland is his dream, etched onto the plate of pioneer America, his scalp lock speaking back to him, a hallucination projected in a near-death cinema.
1864. In a Santa Fe gulley, scalped Scots thirteen-year-old Robert McGee lies bleeding to death. The Last Wolf of Scotland is his dream, etched onto the plate of pioneer America, his scalp lock speaking back to him, a hallucination projected in a near-death cinema.
This shocking real-life incident is our point of departure into the ritualistic imagination of MacGilivray. In this, her first collection, she dissects the Scottish imaginary and builds it up anew, creating a poetic panorama which stretches from the Highlands to the Wild West.
"There are not many books of poetry that can be considered genuinely original and large in scope, even among the disputed ground of 'innovative writing' there is little that is truly groundbreaking. Reading
The Last Wolf of Scotland, however, I feel I may have found just that sort of book."
?Steven Waling, Review 32, Magma
"The Last Wolf of Scotland is a hallucinatory road-trip through Scottish and North American history and language, a bizarre and glorious mash-up of multiple iconographies, with 19th century colonists turning up in 18th century epics and 20th century movies. It exhaustively maps a sprawling Scottish imaginary, one both peculiar to the artist and of significant and often-forgotten historical resonance. MacGillivray dissects?or, rather, bloodily explodes?the ways we make national history in myth and language."?Harry Giles, Sidekick Books.
