Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Runner-up - Hugh McMillan

Hugh McMillan has published five full collections of poetry, the latest being The Lost Garden (Roncadora Press 2010). His pamphlet Postcards from the Hedge won the 2009 Calum MacDonald Memorial Prize and the booklet Devorgilla’s Bridge has been shortlisted for the 2010 Michael Marks prize.

My Father from Extant Sources

The Oral Tradition
He was a bad bastard, well shot of him.

The Pictorial Evidence
He and his brother sat greasy haired on a gate,
their faces full of something worse than mischief:
Fat Boab and Soapy Soutar, grown bad in Auchinleck.
Another, on a horse, tanned and short sleeved,
watching the desert flatten to white waves.
Lawrence of Dumfries.

Moving Images
Mack Sennett outtakes spliced together
and replayed so often in the Multiplex of my head
that every detail's dodgy. Did he really jump that river
from a standing start? Did he really talk to the dead?

The Written Sources
Assorted documents confirming
he was the son and grandson of pitmen,
some Masonic certificates, well thumbed,
a 40s sex manual, mint condition,
a short story, unfinished, about men
who didn't know they'd been killed at Alamein,
and a short account, unsigned, of his funeral
and a grave somewhere near Fortingall.

Other
That painting he left in the attic, a tree
dissected against a nightmare's sky,
with a thumbprint sunk in oils like a calderon,
or the centre of a brief but violent storm.