McKay is the author of twelve books of poetry, including Long Sault, Lependu, and Apparatus. He has twice won the Governor General's Award, for Night Field and Another Gravity. In June 2007, he won the Griffin Poetry Prize for Strike/Slip. McKay, published since 1973, is described as ' a poet with a patient eye, an acute arresting ear, over flowing with details of ornithology, botany, weather, industry, books and music; nuanced descriptions, philosophical phrasing, folksy idiom. madcap humour and elegy'. Others, consider 'awe, astonishment and wonder to be the keynotes of McKay's poems and poetics' and that his prime subject matter to be 'the workings of the human mind'. Mckay has also made a wide impression as a teacher and editor. He is the co-founder and manuscript reader for Brick Books , one of Canada's leading poetry presses, and was editor of the literary journalThe Fiddlehead from 1991 to 1996. He has participated in the Sage Hill Writing experience in Saskatchewan and he is Associate Director for poetry at the Banff Centre for the Arts Writing Studio. He has edited many books by fellow poets, including Ken Babstock, George Elliot Clarke, Tim Lilburn, Barbara Colebrook Peace, and Michael Redhill. Mckay, an avid birdwatcher; and bird themes and flight are dominant topics in his poetry. In Birding, or Desire, the quirky protagonist is never far from his Birds of Canada hobbyist's field guide. McKay's passion for birds and nature percolates throughout all of his work, and some consider 'McKay's preferred environment is located in the natural world'. McKay himself, sees his writing as "nature poetry in a time of environmental crisis." McKay's poems are ecologically centred, inspired by the conflict between inspiration and spiritual, instinct and knowledge. In his is book of poetic philosophy Vis à Vis: Field Notes on Poetry & Wilderness, Mckay details many of his beliefs on metaphor, wildness, and the homing instinct. Uniquely, in his definitive 1993 essay 'Baler Twine' McKay describes those moments 'before wrestling with words and music ', a 'state of mind ',a preparedness, which he labels as 'poetic attention'; and further describes as a 'sort of readiness ', a 'form of knowing'. McKay, also touches therein on his other main poetic themes of 'Wilderness', 'Home', and 'Matériel'.
