Goonie

Michael Mullen

Book of the Month: June 2025

Reviewed by Cameron Wilson

From the first poem of Michael Mullen’s debut collection, the mythical ‘Beithir’ immediately pulls us close with a flick of its forked Caledonian tongue, dripping in familiar vernacular, strange Scots and Proper English, asking ‘what would happen if someone really scrieved in thir ane langwij?’ The rich, accomplished poetry that follows answers with an echoing ‘this’. These poems  beg to be read aloud, and by speaking them into life you too become part of their homely sentiment and enchanting language. Poems like ‘Goonie’ and ‘Tawkin Spiritualizm in thi Barbirz’ fill your body with the physically rattling sounds of Scots, leading us deeper into the romantic lore, family culture, and spiritual colour of Mullen’s world.

It is a privilege to both write and read in the tradition of poets like Tom Leonard and Hugh MacDiarmid. ‘Sacrit is oor geggie blether,’ Mullen declares, also in ‘Beithir’, and indeed the whole collection treats the language with veneration. Phonetic vernacular is both borrowed and created to bring forth noises unique to country, city, suburb, and individual. These sounds are then given space to scream and jump through pronounced, colourful images of Scottish life. This tapestry of sound weaves Leonard’s archetypal ‘thi’, the commonly used online ‘lit’, Mullen’s own ‘hus’, and the synthetic Scots of MacDiarmid, culminating in bizarre phrases like ‘yow-trummle, fireflaucht.’

This obvious skill and control of written phonetics translates readily to abstract noises in ‘Showers’, where ‘golden ratios skim-blink / the rim – sip,’ and in ‘Tenements’, where Mullen manages to utilise every single noise your mouth and mind could create to sculpt Glasgow’s mighty ‘stane thit hames us.’

The collection also constantly draws us in with humour and pleasurable language, only to then trip us with heartfelt sincerity. ‘Hogweed’ frames and cradles moments of tenderness that warm parts of me I didn’t even know were there, while poems like ‘Faggots’, ‘hot pink’ and ‘Poem about Grindr Profiles’ are worth reading thrice to find the gems buried within – Mullen always seems to be able to mine out yet another precious nugget of language hitherto undiscovered.

There are also fleeting mentions of the divine. People, moments, and memories lie at the heart of ‘Goonie’, and are held in absolute reverence. From ‘thi gentle glisten ae God’ (from ‘Ode tae Yer Chain’) to ‘indigenous godlings’ (from ‘Gay Voice’), the simple, grounded subject matter at hand is to be respected and cherished. In the most beautiful image of the entire collection, Mullen describes the ‘Arran Stars’, ‘like God had shotgunned glamour through the sky’s hide.’ Similarly, this poet manages to shotgun glamour, spirit, and tenderness, through the thick, beautiful linguistic hide of Scottish poetry.

 Goonie is published by Corsair

Cameron Wilson is a Glaswegian poet, artist, and librarian, writing in English, Scots, and Scottish Gaelic. His publications include the sold-out 2023 poetry pamphlet I Wish Scotland Was Real, and Deathmatch, a piece of conceptual writing about professional wrestling published in 2024, both by Electric Frog Press.