Not Actually Being in Dumfries

HUGH McMILLAN is a poet from South West Scotland, an award winner in several competitions including the Smith/Doorstep Pamphlet Prize, the Callum MacDonald Prize and the Cardiff International Poetry Competition. He has also been shortlisted for the Michael Marks Prize, the Basil Bunting Poetry Award and the Bridport Prize. He has been published and anthologised widely. His latest book The Other Creatures in the Wood has just been published by Mariscat. He has just finished a commission on contemporary visions of Dumfries and Galloway, for the Wigtown Book Festival.

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• Acknowledgements 11Foreword: Alistair Findlay 13Not Actually Being in Dumfries 17Daydreams 18Notebook 19Hoagies 20A Gift, after the Event 21Twelfth Night 22Silences 23Book Launch, Oxford 2009 24The Visitation: Jacob Epstein 25My Father from Extant Sources 26The Day of Willie Neill’s Funeral 28Saturday Morning 29My Parents’ Marriage 30Excavation 31Grounded 32Caedmon Singing in his Barn 33My Sister Went to Guayaquil 34The Workshop Exercise is `Write about a Potato’ 35Starcat 36Hugelshofer, Jackson, Gilruth, Chinnock and Bain 37Letter 39Too Big a Part 40The End of the Holidays 41Flacking Crombled Wi’ Dwank Shommers o Drod an Fistering Sleugh 43Reborn 44Your Boyfriend Was A Red 45Landing in Neapolis 46Summerisle 47Eating Seafood 48Tales of the Treehouse 49End of Year Exam 50Jock Tamson’s Beach Bar 51Reading Billy Collins in the Bath 52The Balcony of the Salutation Hotel 53Another Day in South West Scotland 54Auchencairn, and Scotland, as it Might Be 55Another Day in South West Scotland 2 56Fairies 57The Flight of the Techno-Quarks 58Carolyn Herschel’s Christmas 59I see White Birds Walk on Ice 60Settlement 61The Black Loch 62from Triumph of the Air, 1989Triumph of the Air 66Saturday in the Western Bar 67A Present of a Submarine 68Anglophobia 70from Tramontana, 1990Bad News about Suicide by Drowning 74On the Point 75In the Southern General 77The Station Bar 79Who Farted in Room xix? (The Ufizzi, July 1988) 80Marina 82Tommy 83Salty 84An American Dream 86Natural Wastage 87Majorettes 88Love Poem 90Lindsay and Susan at Tyne Cot 91The Caulside Cafe 93The Medium and the Mixture (Hole in the Wa’, September, 1986) 94Echoes 96Making for Arcadia 97Ten Past Eleven 99May Revision 100Supervising S3 Science 1021990 104The End of the Road 105from Horridge, 1994The World Book of the McMillans 108Tam Rejects the Consolation of the Church 109Old Bobby Spoils a Night Out 110Soor Faced Sue 112A Very Straight Line 113The Black Gulls 114Sundown 115Play 116Surprise Attacks 117The Fire and the Flowers 118The Window 120In the Frame 121A Wee Word 122Readings of October 123Turning Taps 124Letter from the 24th Congress of the Communist Party 125Dr Gallagher, I presume 126Tour 4150 127Rejoice, there is a Juggler’s Shop 128Ideal Homes 129The Moon over Constanza 130Death on the Nith 131A Cultural Exchange in Scotland 132Pictures in the Fleshers’ Arms 133Marking 135Hammy and the Dog 136Mon Cher 137from Aphrodite’s Anorak, 1996Leaving Scotland by Train 140Willie 141Dundee Jute Mill, Turn of the Century 142Monday Midnight 143Saturday 21st May 144The X Files: Bonnybridge, October `95 145What You Feel like When you get Eaten by a Bear 146Hans from Wuppertal 148Reflections on the Aphrodite of Rhodes 149History of Knossos 150Targets 151Aine 152Address to a Galway Pen 153Easdale 154Getting Too Late For Football 155Blethers 156On the Hoof 157Louisiana Train 158History 159At the Swings 161Angles 162Shug, Alex, Jock, Willie… 163Lyn Wilson Says a Prayer for Robert Burns 164The Little Summer of San Demetrios 165The Cargo of the `Hopeful Binning of Bo’ness’, Bound for the Darien Peninsula, 1699 166As We Go Home 167In Search of Leanne 168Hole in the Wa’ – April ’96 169Saturday Afternoon in the Grotto 171Happy New Year 172from After the Storm, 2005Wandered 174Passage 175While Ian Dunbar sleeps 176Girls in Blue Afghan Coats 177My Mother’s Dictionary 178Old Photograph 179A Curse on Sister Owens 180On the Coast of North West England 182After a Storm 183Marked 184Faculty Meeting 186Summer in Dumfries 187February 189Primary Numbers 190Out of the Way 191Points Missed 192from Strange Bamboo, 2007My Father 194Rabbit Rover’s Last Game 196August (to Andrea & Grievy) 197September 199A Poet Sitting Under a Wall Mistakes Some Pintsof Magners for the Muse 200The Lost Poems 201First Day Back 202The Men From Duncow 204March Past 205Millenium 2 206Oz Aerobics 207Tam’s Room 208Holiday Cottage, Out of the Way 209Another Lost Boy on the Cumnock Bus 210The Man Whose Last Kiss Was Me 211from The Lost Garden, 2010Patriotism 214George 5th Earl Seaton from the portrait by Frans Pourbus the Elder 215Rousing Speeches of the Middle Ages as heard by the back row of spearmen 216Scorched Earth 217Pope Boniface viii Sums Up the Evidence 218Three Letters from a Tenant to MacMhaolain Mor,1745–6 219Proof At Last 221Lochinver 222My Feet 223Moonshine 224Hamecomin’ 225