Eleven Poets for Eleven Days
Wigtown Book Festival has asked Hugh McMillan, one of the Scottish Poetry Library’s Champions and a nationally respected poet from Dumfries & Galloway, to curate ‘Eleven Poets for Eleven Days’ for our 2020 festival.
A poet from the region will be introduced daily, here on our website, along with a video reading of their specially commissioned poem.
Celia Donovan is the second poet in the series.
Scenes of The Solway
A citrus fruit sun sets
beyond bulbous bilberry hills
The last of the daylight
reflects off an abandoned shopping trolley
Lobbed in by wayward youths
And nudged toward the sea for trade.
She may bring well aged driftwood
Or exotic oil slick streaks in exchange.
A flapping straw bonnet pokes ower the top of an easel
The Artist grapples her brushes
and fifty shades of ochre
trying to capture the dying light.
In town a drunk old man
yells impotent rage at seagulls
But journeys here to murmur shanties to the murmuration of geese
And becomes a poet.
Sometimes a seal head pops up
Eyes like two shiny black pennies
Or the occasional otter
hair slicked back for the occasion
And on a good night with a well polished moon
A mermaid or two
Giggling their way along the shoreline
Hunting for abandoned shoes.
Celia Donovan
Celia is a writer based in SW Scotland with a passion for documenting the human experience, from the mundane to the sublime, with raw honesty.
Her work has been described as brave, insightful, accessible, mesmerising and 'no bad', and has been known to make people cry.
Predominantly known for her Facebook page ‘Girl_Interacting’, she has won an award at the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, been featured on the Scottish Book Trust and Scottish Poetry Library websites, and in a former life reviewed music festivals.
She has also trained as a Write to Recovery workshop facilitator with the Scottish Recovery Network and is a mental health activist.
Here she is reading ‘Scenes of the Solway’, an all too familiar seascape of rich humanity as the Nith tumbles into the sea. In a poet’s hands of course, the mundane meets the magical: the Auld Heid meets the mermaid.