This year’s Callum Macdonald Memorial Award for Poetry Pamphlets (run by the National Library of Scotland), was won by Roncadora Press of Dumfries, with Sheep Penned, a witty and original collection of poems by Hugh McMillan, complemented by woodcuts by Hugh Bryden.

Here is a little flight of fantasy from Hugh McMillan’s musings on sheep, which are of course an integral part of the landscape of south-west Scotland. More poems from the 2017 CMMA’s shortlisted pamphlets will feature in this week’s daily poem space.


THE CONVERSION OF SHEEP

When St Filian first came upon the sheep
they stood with their Sumerian heads
and stared him out,
for it is a fact that though sheep are mentioned
many times in the bible,
it is always in a bad way.
Follow me said St Filian,
I have a new path and he pointed
into the hills, to where the sun was rising
setting the gorse to blaze.
They had seen many paths and sunrises,
you might say they were inured to them.
They had grass here, green enough,
and every second Thursday
a book group,
due to discuss that night the third of
Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy,
illustrating existentialism
in a non-Western context.
Nevertheless they saw
the fine pitch of madness
in the old man’s eyes
and, reminding themselves
they were essentially
compliant herd animals,
followed.