Hugh McMillan Poetry Collection
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Diverted to Split; 9781804251409
The Conversation of Sheep; 9781912147793
Haphazardly in the Starless Night; 9781910022894
Heliopolis; 9781912147762
About Diverted to Split:
draw me
a map of the Adriatic
from above,
in cloud white as bone.
Light is a dream
of breathlessness,
and only an inch
from sleep.
Diverted to Split is a poetic journey through the intricate landscapes of life, love and mortality. In this, his sixth collection, Hugh McMillan captures the universal within the intimately personal – be it in the context of friendships, family, travel or politics.
Humour, a consistent part in his poetry, takes on various tones, from the sombre to the wholehearted. Yet, amidst the laughter, the human narrative remains front and centre, embracing both triumphs and inevitable failures.
Praise for Hugh McMillan:
The funniest reader of poetry I’ve ever heard. ALI SMITH
An Apollonian poet, with enough Dionysian to make it interesting. ALASDAIR GRAY
Each poem is like a little compact short story. LESLEY GLAISTER
About The Conversation of Sheep:
This evening all
the greens have welled
into the sky like lilies.
The sheep are
stepping stones to heaven…
(Nocturne)
The Conversation of Sheep is a book by, for, and about sheep. For those who live in the country sheep are strange punctuation marks in life, chewing insouciantly in the background while folk are born, work, live and die below the great and sundering sky.
Some of these poems feature sheep as bucolic extras in the film of life, others delve deep into the secret nature and personalities of sheep themselves. Hugh McMillan is an award winning poet and Michael Robertson, whose photographs also populate this book, is a shepherd who lives in the same village.
About Haphazardly in the Starless Night:
Taking in the years of the pandemic, McMillan’s poetry takes us on a trip through his life and imagination, his hopes, observations and dreams.
It’s never less than an interesting journey. He is an accessible, humorous and tender writer. He is one of Scotland’s best.
About Heliopolis:
McMillan’s Heliopolis ranges from his kitchen table to Greece, St Petersburg and Mars. He finds the universal in the purely local and the local in the universal. Where people live, breath, hope and suffer that’s where his poetry is, as legacy, dream and testament.
Reviews:
The poems in this collection are the hammered gold and enamelling of a master craftsman. ASIF KHAN, Director, Scottish Poetry Library
Here are poems that I think are special, at once local, personal and universal. Treat yourself. ANDREW GREIG
I was entertained and moved by Hugh McMillan’s poetry… these pieces work like resonant and intricately packed short stories. LESLEY GALISTER
In a Scottish literary scene crowded with excellence, McMillan is unique in the angle and tone of his attack on the familiar. IAN DUHIG
About the Author:
HUGH MCMILLAN is a poet from Penpont in Dumfries and Galloway. He has written five full collections of poetry and has read in events and poetry festivals worldwide. His pamphlet Postcards from the Hedge was a winner of the Callum Macdonald Prize in 2009, a prize he won again for Sheepenned in 2017; as part of that prize, he became Michael Marks Poet in Residence for the Harvard Summer School in Napflio, Greece. He was also a winner of the Smith Doorstep Poetry Prize and the Cardiff International Poetry Competition. Devorgilla’s Bridge was shortlisted for the Micael Marks Award and in 2015 was shortlisted for the Basil Bunting Poetry Award. In 2014 Hugh was awarded the first literature commission by the Wigtown Book Festival to create a work inspired by John Mactaggart’s The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopaedia (1824); McMillan’s Galloway was published in limited edition in 2015 and in a revised edition from Luath in 2016. He has featured in many anthologies, and three times in the Scottish Poetry Library’s online selection Best Scottish Poems of the year. His poems have also been chosen three times to feature on National Poetry Day postcards, the latest in 2016. In 2020 he was chosen by the Scottish Poetry Library as one of four ‘Poetry Champions’ for Scotland, to seek out and commission new work, and was given the role as editor of Best Scottish Poems 2021.