Mac Dunlop

Mac Dunlop

Mac Dunlop is a Cornwall based poet who focuses on promoting the spoken word and performance writing. He recently wrote and produced the radio comedy series Unspoken Words which has been broadcast on London’s Resonance FM, and Cornwall’s The Source FM for the last three years.

Mac founded The Poetry Point (TPP) in 2007 – a writer’s ‘hub’ which focuses on encouraging emerging writers and artists to explore different media and art forms.

Also known for developing digital literature in the past, such as the Orbital Poetry engine – as part of the Caravanserai Project a creative research ‘do tank’ on Cornwall’s Roseland Peninsula. Caravanserai hosts writer and artist residencies, as well as regular performance events such as the Fireside Sessions.

He is also works with VS1 Productions, the Bristol based Sign Language Film Specialists which he co-founded in 2003 with David Ellington and Sam Dore.

Reviews:

‘Dunlop differs from other performance poets in that the words and sentiments he utters come to us from a character or persona he has adopted.’

Edward Picot, Editor, The Hyperliterature Exchange

 
‘A master of the monologue in action’

Alyson Hallett, author, ‘The Stone Library

 
Landing Aegean

(Hotel Kissos, Athena)

Light enters,
wearing out eyes
modelling them
on memories of flight.
A pendulum swing
from headache to sleep,
from dreams, awake
alights
on the shores of Odyssey.

In the hotel lobby
sipping coffee,
sitting in ochre seats
surrounded by purple light.
Rothko seating, eyes out, neon
light leaking through
the door frame cracks of the lift.
Halogen stars holding up the floors above
where you sleep.

I, sleepless
pause
and
watch the second hand creep
round again
caging me in night and day,
and
through the open hotel doors
see
lace broken curtains twitch
in the dust white caravan parked
tilting
across the road.

A bulldozer chugs by
chain smokin’ building
the rest of the world
from inside out
this hotel’s foundations
up
where
an empty ceiling fixture
dangles from the sky
hoping one day
to be a chandelier
glinting
amidst the stars.

 
Landing Agean is from a series of 6 poems titled Cycladia – reflections on passing time in the Aegean Sea.

 
Poetry in this post: © Mac Dunlop
Published with the permission of Mac Dunlop