Shore Poets
Ian McDonough's work has been featured widely, from the Times Higher Educational Supplement to Physics News, The Scotsman and New Writing Scotland. His latest collection, The Vanishing Hitchhiker (2007), is published by Mariscat Press.
Ian’s first full-length poetry collection Clan MacHine (Chapman) was shortlisted for Saltire Scottish First Book of the Year in 2004. The poem sequence A Rising Fever was published by Kettilonia in 2000, and in the same year he was commissioned by the Engineering and Science Research Council and Strathclyde University to produce a series of poems on particle physics.
His first play 51 Pegasus toured Scotland in 2003. He co-edited the second Shore Poets anthology The Ice Horses (Scottish Cultural Press).
Originally from Brora, Sutherland, he now lives in Edinburgh with his partner and daughter. He is a recent recipient of a SAC Writer’s Award, and was winner of the National Galleries of Scotland writing competition 2008.
Ian's personal website: www.ianmcdonough.co.uk
Last updated 10-Aug-2010
Air Born
A thing has ripped the sky, weighted
like a stunt kite free of wind.
Crumpled, half-conscious on the beach,
ears leaking sea-green blood,
it rolls its cloudy eyes.
Men arrive and nail the carcass to a board,
crossing themselves,
glowering at its feathers, fingers, toes,
They haul it to the top of Harbour Hill:
the man-gull clears its throat,
sings of death in measured, courtly tones.
It speaks of tar, Deuteronomy, arithmetic,
the gloriousness of birds, the ghastliness of man.
Secrets rise like Titans from the village green
till, crazed, the elders stuff its mouth with rags.
The gull sings on as flocks of villagers are drawn
to feel the sharp relief of salt on wounds.
Children start to itch and agitate their skin,
grin widely when white feathers bloom on limbs.
As the wind lifts they beat their arms together,
fly swift and strong beyond the silly village.
Far below, the elders cast up unbelieving eyes
towards the air’s unparalleled geometry.
Sky Above Premier Travel Inn, Inverness
Some ancient Celtic water god
is emptying the contents of his stomach
over the streets of this rural city.
I'm peering upwards hopefully.
as an all-absorbing blackness
pinpoints the vacuum in his eyes.
Have mercy on us, water god,
we who roam from Travelodge to Travel Inn,
chasing the smiles of strangers.
After the rain, high grey wisps pattern the dark
like flecks from the water god's foaming maw.
I slip the outside world beneath my bed.
Morning reassembles me, glues back together
all the flimsy furniture that sleep has trashed.
