Next: Collected Poems

by Billy MacKinnon

Poetry by the screenwriter of Hideous Kinky starring Kate Winslet, and script editor of Jane Campion's The Piano.

A poetry of Athens and Berlin of faux-mythologies and love and put-downs, songs of the dislocated, songs of the streets.

This poetry volume is the yield of almost nine years of notebooks, observations and locations, mostly Athens and Berlin, but a smattering of London, Marrakech, Cameroon and West Bengal. I am a worker in film and stage: it is a wandering life.

The act of observation may be at the heart of all this, of observed events on a daily, human scale, but also of recorded personal feelings and reactions, a springboard to some more generalised reality, to the mythos of the particular moment.

A lost button on a Berlin cafe pavement, a shabby girl in golden sandals, a civic rubbish bin, the lures of poverty, the nags of memory; each is commonplace enough, but a window, too, onto the sightlines and vanishing points of human possibility.

Poetry functions at the edge of grammar and hence the edge of meaning, with all its pitfalls and opportunities. Yet to quote an unexpected and surprising source, Anais Nin: 'In dreams we dream alone. Only reality is shared.' Not only author, but player in that concomitant. The imaginary speaker, the imagined self, imagined listener – all of that, of course. And yet there is the broader stage of common struggle and imagination whose best practitioner may yet remain the popular song. It wakes you, a half-discovered melody, half-invented, a fragment at your bedside. Not the stuff of dreams. A visitor, for real. The stuff of song, whose voice is simple in its simple imperative, simple in its life-affirmingness. Singer. Sing.

For fans of Catullus, Tu Fu, Emily Dickinson, Anna Akhmatova, Berthold Brecht, Jacques Prevert, and Robert Graves.

140 pages, Paperback

Published June 24, 2025

Reviews

[Angie Athanassiades · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Billy Mckinnon’s NEXT, the reader is taken on a journey of wonder and surprises. His language is spare and precise, revealing a poet who observes as acutely as he distils the world around him. The poems are like profound snapshots of different corners of life and cities, in which people and the details that make up their lives and stories are depicted with kindness and a keen eye for what lies behind the obvious. In ‘Gibbet,’ the poet notices a mattress as it ‘passes along the pavement,’ those carrying it hidden behind it, and imagines the various moments and events it witnessed in its lifetime, capturing the small moments that make up a life and the part objects play within it. In ‘Allerheiligen, Hassenheide Cemetery,’ romantic love and the human condition merge seamlessly, as a couple, ‘winter at their heels,’ visit a cemetery and imagine their own deaths through the love they feel for each other. Mckinnon’s keen but delicate observations of urban settings extend to other creatures too. In ‘Bar’ and ‘Birthday Party,’ the poet’s attention falls on the stray cats of Athens, in which the poetic voice considers the invisible but very real creatures and souls we live amongst. But Mckinnon’s work is just as powerful and moving when he turns his attention to nature and mythology. ‘Sunflower Field in Autumn,’ describes the glory and demise of sunflowers following the trajectory of their season in the flowers’ own voice, capturing both the majesty and vulnerability of nature, while in ‘Orpheus,’ history and myth meet in a haunting poem, where a present-day Orpheus, relegated to a sanctuary in a swamp, enjoys the kindness of birds and the attention of the moon and sun. There are many more poems in the collection, each one leaving the reader with a sense that they have wandered through the same spaces as the poet, with the poet. It is a wonderful collection overall, at times poignant, at times surprising, but always rewarding. I enjoyed it so much, I can imagine returning to it time and again.

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

This poetry collection is an accumulation of nine years of notebook writings, and that shows in the varying quality of the poems. The ones I did enjoy were "Face" and "Owl", which have well-defined, relatable subjects. Unfortunately, the rest of the collection blurred together for me, simply because I found it difficult to feel anything emotionally. For me, poetry needs to evoke emotion. A poet can experiment with vocabulary, diction, or structure (that I can appreciate) but no matter how it's expressed, the final poem should say something meaningful or touch on a universal theme.

With this collection, I often found myself disconnected, struggling to stay engaged. That won’t be the case for everyone, of course. Readers who enjoy abstract, experimental poetry might find more to hold onto here. But for those who, like me, gravitate toward emotionally charged, accessible work, this one may feel distant.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Andrew Atkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow. Some very powerful poetry. Very good word play throughout. Keenly-observed reflections on love and life. When I finished reading this collection of poems I went back to the start and re-read it throughout. What’s more, I expect to dip in and out of it whenever the muse takes me. Many thanks to the author for such an entertaining and thoughtful read and to BookSirens for making it available. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.