Hugh McMillan - 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

Strange Bamboo ISBN-13 978 1 904886 51 8 £8.95 from Shoestring Press
Visit Hugh's podcast and poetry blog.

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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,

practicing pitching bombs

on babies’ heads.