Martin Malone

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Gannet…


offers quarter point, banks left

and is the compass rose of self,

drawn by the sea’s dark magnet

to narrow on its dive. That beak

could nail you to a bloody rood,

eviscerate the dull mind’s scrod,

fall ravenous on an idling flex

from nowheres of insipid sky

and still come back for more.

Here, against the ocean scrim:

white cross on Payne’s grey,

corn-tinged torc of neck,

post-punk graphic head,

those brown bastard wings

angle steel-tipped greed

to cleave the surface water

and feed a boundless want.

Firebolt cruciform retracting in-

to knife, you’ve glid the season

by me, swept aside my morning

for the zero sum of your hunt.

In turn, I sift the cortex

of near-forgotten dread,

to lose you in the thinking

as this sharp beak hits white.


from Ginkgo Poetry Prize Anthology 202o

Image credit: Bryan Angus












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 was published by Hedgehog Poetry in December 2020. 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 wide variety of magazines & journals. He reviews for  Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Wales and Poetry Salzburg Review. An editor at Poetry Salzburg and  Honorary Research Fellow in Creative Writing at Aberdeen University, he has a PhD in poetry from Sheffield University. Currently,  Martin is a Poetry Ambassador for the Scottish Poetry Library.


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