Literary
Testimonials
Rising in the shade of Wendell Berry’s meditations on the earth and human dependency, Nancy Mackenzie’s poems, holding “echoes / part eternal part pure now,” move effortlessly toward that communion beyond but still enfolding the “stolen habitat,” reminding the reader that poetry … [can] take us to the heart of life, bounded by angels and remembered prairies, family lives beginning and ending, and “throaty summer women.” - E.D. Blodgett
Like Nancy Mackenzie’s ancestors, we pull up our chairs to her hearth, drawn in by the fire and clarity of her spirit and her words. Here is a poet who offers us not only the wild and the raven, but a glass of the finest, purest river. - Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Mackenzie’s skill at weaving together the mythological, the ecological, and the personal, is matched by her coincident awareness of the beautiful and the magical hidden in lain sigh all around her. … playful but not superficial, currents of intelligence and compassion run parallel throughout these poems. There is knowledgeable music here that is bound to reward the reader. - Calvin Wharton
Crisp-Maned Bay Is an honour-braid of Greek myth, runes and crystals, Christian mysticism, and Indigenous ritual. It is a fable ….These poems are the music of Debussy, Celtic harp and Hildegard Von Bingen. They are both exotic and close to home like the moon that “multiplies in the sky / until six iterations float like sails.” These poems are for anyone who has ever sought love, guidance, and connections, takes pleasure in beautiful word-images, and who is ready to “harness turbulence with rhythm.” - Julie Robinson
"These owl-haunted poems display deft control of theme, and an often startling but always apt originality of language, form and argument .. the wisdom this writing contains circles elusive and real as the owl the poet takes as her spirit guide, as evidence of the persistence of the world and holy amidst our orderly, routinized lives." – Tom Wayman
"The locus of Soul’s Flight is a delightful and startling evocation of the imagination through the body of family, animal (anima), and place (imago). Nancy Mackenzie breathes into poetry a philosophy of Is-ness that is refreshing and renewing. She gives us poems that span the range of attention and habit necessary for a sensate life of the mind and of the spirit, when we soar and these do." – Fred Wah
"Nancy Mackenzie’s poetry touched me immediately. Her poems triggered visual stimuli and memories registered in my subconscious mind. The colours, textures and patterns of her words fill my imagination…” – Carol Breen, Visual Artist
"Nancy’s world stretches from the West Coast through the prairies, all the way to Scotland and Greece. It is populated with forests, philosophers, children, horses, white bulls and troubadours. Whatever the landscape, the main thread is always the soul in a continuous, passionate process of creation." – Anna Mioduchowska
Published Works
My writing life takes me to retreats at the Banff Centre, the Ghost River area, and Strawberry Creek in Alberta; Athens, Kardamyli, and Limnisa in Greece; and Grifo Alto, Costa Rica, where working with writers-in-residence and fellow writers broadens my perspective and makes way for the muse. On retreat, I focus primarily on poetry and fiction, though I’ve had the great fortune to have published books for children, including
Adventurous Albertans: The Women and Men Who Built This Province. A Grade 4 social studies textbook, published by Plains Publishing Inc.
Peter's Birthday is a big picture book, published by Reidmore Books.
Peter’s Moccasins (with Jan Truss) was also published by Reidmore Books.
Below, you’ll find links to my published books of poetry and novels.
Soul's Flight
Poems inspired by Neoplatonic thinking take the reader on a metaphysical journey from the birth of a child to the death of his grandmother. As the family folklore unfolds, the “poems’ locus is a delightful and startling evocation of the imagination through the body of the family, animal (anima), and place (imago). [The poet] breathes into poetry a philosophy of is-ness that is refreshing and renewing. She gives us poems that span the range of attention and habit necessary for a sensate life of the mind and of the spirit, when we soar and these do.” –Fred Wah.
The Illuminated Life
Passages from Marsilio Ficino’s Book of Life, from Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue, Federico Garcia Lorca, and Byzantium hymns inform the four sections of this book. Named after genres of medieval illuminated manuscripts, the four parts investigate how each of us, as authors of our own lives, illuminate our lives as we write our scripts. Look for inspiration in 1) Medical Treatises, Herbals, Hunting Books, and Encyclopedias, 2) The Battle of the Virtues and Vices, 3) Chivalrous Histories, and 4) The Book of Hours.
The Illuminated Life, published 2002 by Ekstasis Editions
Eyeing the Magpie
Five poets have chosen the magpie as their muse for the bird’s survival instinct, its beauty, cleverness, and its mythological significance. The book and the CD of its performance, accompanied by musicians Original Din, are a celebration of artistic creation, an honouring of poetic collaboration, and a toast to our favourite winged peeve.
Communion
Communion is a cross-spectrum expression of the many ways we can be and are in communion with the Earth and with the divine. Through free verse, sestina, and glosa, Communion is a river, a tete-a-tete with the dead, a watchman at the gate, a song, and an image of the world where words build a bridge “corpus-pontiflex“ between humans and the spirit in the world around us.
Communion, published 2010 by Ekstasis Editions
Crisp-Maned Bay
The poems in this book find fierce joy in calling in ghosts with their wisdoms and magics. “Crisp-Maned Bay” – three words from The Mabinogion – herein evoke the horse as well as the sea (bay), to be complicit in the poet’s travels through a corridor of time. Many of the poems recall Greece’s pentelic pillars and the soft glow of lantern light in a little Mediterranean village by the sea.
Crisp-Maned Bay, published 2018 by Ekstasis Editions
Nerve Line
A poetic and painterly view of the world of horse racing, Nerve Line includes a touch of true history, a dose of magic, and a palette full of surprises. It will settle you on your porch swing, then take you through the lush Irish countryside and out to the Rocky Mountains and ranchlands for a spell.
Nerve Line, published 2014 by Ekstasis Editions
