Once upon a Scottish time in the 17th-century, Mary MacLeod was banned from composing any song indoors or outdoors, so she defiantly wrote a song on her threshold instead. Hence Marilyn Bowering's tribute to the rebel poet of the Hebrides, Mary MacLeod, is called Threshold (Leaf Press $20). Bowering's poems are spare tributes, evoking Màiri as a sister poet. An afterword recalls Bowering's Hebridean rambles [pictured here] to the islands of Harris (burial places of the MacLeods), Berneray (where Mary MacLeod lived), North Uist and South Uist in 2010, but it's neither a travelogue nor a biography. Photos are by Xan Shian (Bowering's daughter). Threshold was the co-winner of the Gwendolyn MacEwan Poetry Competition for Best Suite in 2013. Mary MacLeod was born c. 1615 on the island of Harris and died at Dunvegan c. 1707 on the island of Skye.
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