Martin Malone

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NEVERENDIANS


From half-term Indians to hard-nosed veterans

in the space of a year, underage and over here,


we hunker down beneath a ridge lousy with Fritz

and know in our bones it’s the war that wins wars,


that blood alone moves the wheels of history and that

this trench system, set end-to-end, might circle what


we like to call God’s Earth, His good work spoiled

by the hand of man which, having written, moves on


in a scrawl of broken men but again finds time,

when out of the line at the end of a bloody day,


to slump into a dug-out, once more take up its pen

and wearily address the hopeless task of this:


It is my sorrowful duty to write to you of the death

of your son…




From The Unreturning (Shoestring Poetry, 2019)








Martin Malone lives in north-east Scotland. He has published 3 poetry collections: The Waiting Hillside (Templar, 2011), Cur (Shoestring, 2015) and The Unreturning (Shoestring 2019). Larksong Static: Selected Poems 2005-2020 will be published next year. In addition, he has published 4 pamphlets: 17 Landscapes (Bluegate Books), Prodigals (The Black Light Engine Room), Mr. Willett’s Summertime (Poetry Salzburg), Shetland Lyrics (Hedgehog). Poems from these and his other work have been published in a variety of journals; such as Stand, Strix, Poetry Ireland Review, Acumen, Agenda, Poetry Salzburg Review, Long Poem Magazine, Magma, The Moth, Gutter, Butcher’s Dog, Under The Radar, Lighthouse and Bare Fiction. He reviews for The Interpreter’s House, Stand, Causeway/ Cabhsair and Poetry Ireland Review. An Associate Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing at Aberdeen University, he has a PhD in poetry from Sheffield University.


Online Courses

Study with Dr Martin Malone

University of Aberdeen

Writing Poetry: Voice & Skills


Academic Profile