More Richly in Earth: A Poet’s Search for Mary MacLeod

by Marilyn Bowering

More Richly in Earth is a compelling exploration of the mystery of a 17th century Scottish Gaelic bard and her intersection with a Canadian poet.

Mary MacLeod (Màiri nighean Alasdair Ruaidh) was a a female bard in seventeenth-century Scotland. While her lyrics were honoured, she was also marginalized, denigrated as a witch, and exiled, both for being a writer and for what she wrote.

Presented as a chronicle of journeys through the Scottish Hebrides, More Richly in Earth explores MacLeod’s legacy, preserved within landscape, memory, and identity. In an act of recovery and restoration, Canadian poet and novelist Marilyn Bowering pieces together the puzzle of radically different accounts of MacLeod’s life, returning to the places the bard once lived with the help of contemporary Scottish Gaelic poets and scholars. Through investigation and imagination, Bowering forms a connection with MacLeod despite vast differences of culture and language, time and place. Their connection deepens as Bowering twines MacLeod’s story with accounts of the people and places that shaped her own life, a connection that ultimately reveals the foundations of Bowering’s artistic vocation to herself.
*
from the readers’ reports: … a lovely, compelling contribution to our knowledge, awareness, and understanding of Mary and, perhaps most especially, to the potential for beauty and power within connections to the past …to the hidden stories within landscape; or to ourselves, and the layers of memory, feeling, and identity which are still always within our reach … it will have immense appeal to general readers with interests in Scottish history and culture, especially Highlands and Islands; in untold and marginalised histories of women; and in reflective nature and landscape writing. It also points to some connections between Mary’s work, context, and culture and issues of deep resonance within our present moment (indigenous rights; the environmental crisis; understanding of the complexity of personal identity more broadly) … it is beautifully written, with a striking combination of lucidity and depth.

*
This book is a major work: it deals in detail with the life and poetry of an important Gaelic poet of the 17th century; her place as a woman poet in a male-dominated society; it delves deeply into the nature of poetry, its sources and inspiration itself; makes correspondences between Canada and Scotland, particularly how her own journey as poet links to her childhood upbringing in British Columbia; it is a work of imagination and scholarship.
Has she solved the mystery of Màiri Nighean Alasdair Ruaidh? Maybe not, but she has clarified a lot of what was hidden and anybody researching Mary MacLeod and her work would do well to read this book. I highly recommend it.

Maoilios Caimbeul (Myles Campbell)

Genres: Nonfiction

282 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2024

About the author

MARILYN BOWERING’s first novel, To All Appearances A Lady, was a New York Times Notable Book. Her second novel, Visible Worlds, was short-listed for the prestigious Orange Prize, nominated for the Dublin IMPAC Prize, and awarded the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Visible Worlds was praised by The Independent as “a tour de force … a wonderful piece of storytelling” and by The New York Times Book Review as “a vast, sprawling feast of a book.” Her novel What it Takes to Be Human was praised by The Globe and Mail as “a great novel… [Bowering] does not seek moments to be brilliant: those moments just arrive.” A new novel, The Unfinished World, was published in late 2025. Bill Gaston, author of Juliet Was a Surprise and The World, called The Unfinished World "a beautiful, insightful novel that performs a remarkable trick with history, time, and memory, a brilliant interweaving that is both teasingly cerebral as well as richly heartfelt.”

More Richly in Earth, part memoir and part literary investigation of a 17th century female Scottish Gaelic bard, was published by McGill Queen’s Press in 2024 and was long-listed for the Saltire Prize. The Scottish Gaelic writer Maoilios Caimbeul called it "a major work."

Marilyn Bowering is also an award-winning poet and librettist. Jan Zwicky says of Bowering, Her brilliant imagistic gift is always offered in service to the mystery of insight, the other invisible worlds gathered close in this one. Bowering’s poetry includes Human Bodies: Collected Poems 1987-1999, Green, an interplay of form and conversations and Soul Mouth, a book of story and memoir poems. With Threshold (photographs by Xan Shian), Marilyn Bowering extends the conversation to an encounter with a 17th century female Scottish Gaelic bard. Of What Is Long Past Occurs in Full Light (illustrations by Ken Laidlaw), Jan Zwicky comments, Despite her unflinching acknowledgement of the horrors humans visit on themselves and others, her vision is grounded in the subtle integrity of love. A new book of poetry, Frayed Linens, will be published in November 2025.

Marilyn Bowering has received many poetry prizes including the Ruth and David Lampe Award, the Gwen MacEwen Poetry prize, the Pat Lowther Prize, the Dorothy Livesay Prize, several National Magazine Awards, two nominations for the Governor General’s award, and shortlisting for the Prix Italia and the Sony Award. An opera, Marilyn Forever (composer Gavin Bryars), has received production premieres (2013-2022) in Victoria, BC; Long Beach, Ca.; Adelaide, Australia; Vienna, Austria; Oxford and Glasgow, UK; and Hagen and Saarbrücken, Germany. Bowering’s work has been translated into a number of languages including Spanish, Finnish, German, Romanian, Russian, and Punjabi.
Marilyn Bowering was born in Winnipeg and grew up in Victoria, BC. She has lived in various parts of Canada and in Greece, Scotland and Spain and now makes her home on Vancouver Island.

Reviews

[Jessica Bowering · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved reading this. Partly I loved the glimpses into my own family history and places and people that are familiar to me. But I would have loved it without that. I was drawn in by learning about a person I knew nothing about (Mary MacLeod) through the lens of why she was interesting to the author. At first it seemed dense with dates and details but I found that information was repeated where necessary and contextualized so it became easy to follow and clear why it was interesting.

[Jenny Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delicious!!

[Russell Thornton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is both a brilliant investigation of a 17th-century female Gaelic-language Scottish bard and a fascinating personal memoir. It's also beautifully written, extraordinarily insightful, and a superb meditation on poetry. I couldn't put it down.