STRANGE BAMBOO
Hugh McMillan’s fourth full collection ‘Strange Bamboo’ is about to be released by Shoestring Press. This book reveals him as one of Scotland’s sharpest and most accessible talents. His subject matter ranges from the local to the universal but all is observed with clarity, an unsentimental compassion and, often, a rollicking sense of fun.
Much modern poetry is portentous and self-consciously clever. McMillan’s is, as Robert Nye once pointed out, “ a breath of fresh air.”
“McMillan is unique in the angle and tone of his attack on the familiar.” Ian Duhig
Out of the Way
Lydia has pink sandals
and butterfly clips:
it’s sunny in the gardens,
the grass tiger stripes,
the news only a distant wheeze
from a kitchen radio,
drowned by bees,
a breeze, the birdsong.
This is why we’re here:
nothing to worry over
but tumbles on soft lawns,
that and the vicious roar
of fighter bombers, spinning
like needles over garden sheds,
practising pitching bombs
on babies’ heads.
Strange Bamboo ISBN-13 978 1 904886 51 8 £8.95 from Shoestring Press
Hugh McMillan’s fourth full collection ‘Strange Bamboo’ is about to be released by Shoestring Press. This book reveals him as one of Scotland’s sharpest and most accessible talents. His subject matter ranges from the local to the universal but all is observed with clarity, an unsentimental compassion and, often, a rollicking sense of fun.
Much modern poetry is portentous and self-consciously clever. McMillan’s is, as Robert Nye once pointed out, “ a breath of fresh air.”
“McMillan is unique in the angle and tone of his attack on the familiar.” Ian Duhig
Out of the Way
Lydia has pink sandals
and butterfly clips:
it’s sunny in the gardens,
the grass tiger stripes,
the news only a distant wheeze
from a kitchen radio,
drowned by bees,
a breeze, the birdsong.
This is why we’re here:
nothing to worry over
but tumbles on soft lawns,
that and the vicious roar
of fighter bombers, spinning
like needles over garden sheds,
practising pitching bombs
on babies’ heads.
Strange Bamboo ISBN-13 978 1 904886 51 8 £8.95 from Shoestring Press
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