Jim C. Mackintosh

Deputy First Minister of Scotland John Swinney has called Mackintosh a “diehard St. Johnstone fan [who] makes an important contribution to the cultural fabric of Perthshire.” Mackintosh’s passion for football led to his being appointed poet in residence of St. Johnstone Football Club in 2016. One of the products of that residency was Mind the Time (Backpage Press 2017), an anthology of football-related poems produced to raise money for dementia initiative Football Memories Scotland. In 2021 he took part in a series of live readings at the Scottish Poetry Library to celebrate the Euro 2020 football tournament. Mackintosh has also held residencies with other organisations: in 2021 he was the official Makar of the Federation of Writers Scotland and as Makar of the Cateran Ecomuseum he has written poetry in response to large-scale art installations in the Perthshire countryside.

Mackintosh is interested in shared cultural experiences – in history, sport and art – and how these things intersect and connect with our lives. He writes about the culture and camaraderie of football fandom in poems such as “Rituals” and “Turnstiles.” Events in history, both near and distant, inspire other poems: the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum (“Come To Me Another Time Soon”); the Highland Clearances (“Calvie”). The environment figures heavily in the work, often in a poignant aspect: flora emerging from the cracks in an abandoned building offers a glimpse of hopefulness (“A Pale Blue Dot”); shoes washed up on a Scottish beach provoke poignant reflections (“It Used to Be Bottles”). Mackintosh’s poetry often considers mortality, be it in the expected setting of a funeral (“In the Photograph”) or in everyday occurences: a leaf plucked from the ground (“The Leaf”); a butterfly in an unexpected place (“Butterfly Gallery”).

Mackintosh has edited anthologies dedicated to Scots poets Hamish Henderson (The Darg, Poet’s Republic Press 2019) and George Mackay Brown (Beyond the Swelkie, Tippermuir Books 2021).