Fergus McGonigal

Biography

Former Worcestershire Poet Laureate. I have two collections published by Burning Eye: "The Failed Idealist's Guide to the Tatty Truth" (2014), and "Everyone Is Now Unhappy" (2017). A children's collection, "The Thought Which Fell Down the Back of the Sofa" (2016), was published by BX3.

Samples

INEFFABLE I sit upon the floor inside my childhood bedroom, wondering why it is that God cannot be seen. ‘God is in everything,’ I’m told, but I can see this isn’t true. He isn’t in my radio. He isn’t in my Action Man. He isn’t in the church on Sunday. Although I look, I cannot see him in my mother’s vanished face. I manufacture God from things left lying on my bedroom floor: some wooden blocks, a dried-out paintbrush, the engine from my brother’s train set, and a wig from the dressing-up box. God balances next to the bookshelf. ‘Hello there, God,’ I say, but God does not reply; he doesn’t have a mouth. ‘Here, borrow mine,’ I say. I wear God’s wig and start to talk. I talk like God, or how I think that God would talk. I open-shut my mouth, then open-shut my mouth again as silence fills the room. I stand there, mute, more fish than God. ‘For God is very like a fish,’ I say, in pompous, priestly tones. I open-shut my fish-God mouth for one last time, de-wig myself, and put God back inside his boxes.

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