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by Julie McNeill

Hugh McMillan’s latest collection Diverted to Split (Luath Press) is an attack on the familiar by one of Scotland’s finest poets.

Separated into six sections, the reader is transported through time, led down verges, up winding paths and taken to unexpected and surprising places in their own hearts and imagination by a poet assured in his craft.

Historical tales are retold to ‘right the wrongs’ as McMillan sees them, often centring those excluded or overlooked. ‘The Scythian Women’:  “sent to fight for / Alexander the Great before / the Great battle of Jaxartes [. . .] their cries / not reminiscent / of vixens at all / but wolves”; ‘Catherine of Sienna’: “Look behind: they have / swaddled this woman then / cored her out”. Also, though, histories closer to home: his poem Piecing it Together tells of the poet’s own struggle to make sense of his past: ‘the most one can say is/ look at me after all this time / at the edge of the ocean still / piecing it together”.

There’s a vulnerability to McMillan’s work, an intimacy, where the reader is invited well below the surface:  “I don’t think anything is off limits”, he says, “my poetry is the narrative of my life”. A reflection both on the poet’s own style but also the beauty of poetry, where you often find people willing to share the deepest parts of themselves at open mics in dark pubs, or at workshops round bright library tables, with people they barely know.

McMillan is described by many as the ‘poet’s poet’, someone doing the quiet good work of the poetry scene: encouraging marginalised, under-represented or young voices, providing platforms, often giving freely of his time to edit, champion and advise fledgling talent.

Of young writers he says, “they’ve not had the poetry wrung out of their souls yet”. He recently edited  Among the Oranges, an anthology of creative writing from pupils of Kirkcudbright Academy (funded by the Holywood Trust) and was the driving force behind collections such as Josie Neill’s  first solo book ‘There’s Ma Mammy Wavin’ (released at the age of 86).

Through his editorial position with Drunk Muse Press, McMillan has championed writers such as Alistair Lawrie whose collection Caal Cries in Doric was released in time for his 75^th birthday as well as Palestinian poets such as Dareen Tatour and Mohammed Moussa. He runs regular creative writing groups in Dumfries and Galloway and spends a large amount of his time supporting writers from all over the world with honest, thoughtful critique and encouragement.

Despite (or, maybe, because of) all this, he continues to produce a significant body of his own work, writing most days of voyages – both real and imaginary – from his home in Southwest Scotland. Even if you were unfamiliar with McMillan’s work before the pandemic, you may have engaged with him since through his #PlagueOPoems initiative, where he gathered voices from around the world through his YouTube channel during lockdown.

Well worth a look, it serves as a digital archive of creativity in a time where sharing work, or connecting with other writers and creatives was fraught with challenge. Not a fan of the dreaded zoom room, he embraced online  forums during the pandemic to connect with other writers: his humorous poem ‘Zoom Poetry Reading’ sums this up beautifully. ‘The sun is breaking / over Calum like an egg / iphone6 is asleep or dead / her face  turned like a spoon / towards the screen / what brings them here [. . .] I’ll just read several more’.

“I admire teenage writers”, McMillan says,  “cos they’ve stuck it through the long years of analysing poetry at school and being exposed to great poets that they think they can never emulate. The ones that realise they’ve got a story to tell and are going to tell it because they want you to and can’t stop themselves. I love that they trust to their own instincts.”

In ‘Bitter Old Men’, generational divides are explored through a humorous account of an overheard conversation on  a bus:  “Things were not like this / when these bitter old men were young / though it is unclear when this was / Dalmellington in the 18^th century perhaps / more likely never, for these men emerged / fully embittered and wizened as walnuts”.

In his self-deprecating style, McMillan describes having  a “kind of two pronged underwhelming attack on the poetry world”. Producing work on “the history and culture of the South-West” (For instance, recently, on John Keats’ time in Galloway.) – while simultaneously “writing morbidly depressed or manic poems which I like to bring out in a collection when there’s enough of them”.

Far from “morbidly depressed or manic”, this is an assured and accomplished collection. The back cover bears Lesley Glaister’s comment that “each poem is like a little compact short story”, and it’s true that McMillan is a master storyteller. He bleeds his own love and loss onto the page seemingly effortlessly, whilst taking the reader by the hand as they turn these stones over in their own mouths: “We are all touched by the same sky, the same misery and joys [. . .] it all happens under the same shell-coloured sky’ (‘Yellow Horses’).

One of the things that marks McMillan out in a crowded poetry scene is his ability, and propensity, to use humour to disarm or entertain – “I think using humour you can get the attention of folk in a way that poems that take themselves more seriously sometimes don’t. I’ve also got some good historical poems I can use if the audience aren’t asleep yet”.

This collection is certainly not short of humour, but it is used skilfully, taking the reader somewhere they think they know, then surprising them with something novel and unexpected. Seemingly serious-sounding poems such as ‘Learning About the Religious Wars, Wigtown Book Festival 2022’ actually feature a failed bus journey, resulting in a trip to the Star Bar where a barman has just bought a crossbow and “wanted to fire it / to see what happened”.

What ties the collection together is a sense of place – whether that be through poems exploring and voyaging everywhere from the verge to the Aegean; or examining what it is to be a father, a friend, or a human being in 2024 – McMillan leads us skilfully through the depths of his life and imagination. 

“Everyone belongs somewhere, thrives best somewhere.”, he says, “my place is often a shifting vision though, a mixture of places I’ve been, I imagine I’ve been and places I’d like to go. I fondly imagine that my heart is in the highlands like that awful song they made you learn at school but my place is equally populated by bright sun and dark water”.

“I am thinking how hard / it is to be a moment away / from love / never mind a lifetime. / People did it. Wrote letters / on the whims of the waves, / sent cards and packets / opened under dull or lurid skies” (‘Waterfoot’).

“I’m tempted to say something completely wanky”, he adds, “like poetry is an expression of love. But it’s certainly an expression of compassion about humanity in all its guises. I’m not sure I’m a love poet but I write what I feel and I’m hoping that is empathy and our shared need to communicate it”.

Finally, on his poetry idols or inspirations – “I’m lucky to have known Iain Crichton Smith quite well. I totally love his poetry, his tone, his humour though I don’t have my mother’s tongue to know his poetry properly. Is it heresy to say everyone should read his Murdo stories? Everyone should also read Bluets by Maggie Nelson. It’s definitely sort of poetry, the kind of thing I’d love to have written, if I was only imaginative and talented enough”.

Diverted to Split is a beautiful, accomplished, assured collection from a poet whose work is rooted in a kind of rare honestly. Read this book, it will take you to places that sustain, challenge and entertain. It will simultaneously make you want to write, and feel it has already all been laid out before you.

Diverted To Split is available now from Luath Press & all good booksellers.

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