Hamish MacDonald (writer)

Hamish MacDonald (born 1958) is a Scottish writer and performer whose work includes poetry, fiction, theatre and radio. Writing in English and Scots, he was the inaugural Robert Burns Writing Fellow for Dumfries and Galloway Arts Association from 2003 to 2006 and the first Scots Scriever at the National Library of Scotland from 2015 to 2017. He founded Dogstar Theatre Company and won the Scottish Slam Poetry Championship in 2022.

Career

MacDonald was born in Helensburgh and raised in Clydebank. He later settled in the Highlands and was living in Inverness by 2026. He founded the theatre company originally known as The Collectors in 1998; it later became Dogstar Theatre Company. His plays have been performed in Scotland and abroad.

Among his theatre works is The Captain's Collection, based on the life of Captain Simon Fraser of Knockie and his preservation of Highland music. A later production toured in 2012. MacDonald also wrote Factor 9, a testimony-based play drawing on the experiences of haemophiliacs Bruce Norval and Robert Mackie and the contaminated blood scandal. It premiered in Umeå, Sweden, during the city's year as European Capital of Culture in 2014 before touring elsewhere in Europe and Scotland.

Dogstar experienced funding difficulties in 2014 after an unsuccessful application for regular funding from Creative Scotland. MacDonald subsequently resigned as the company's joint artistic director. He has also served as director of Moniack Mhor, the creative writing centre near Inverness.

From 2003 to 2006 MacDonald was the first Robert Burns Writing Fellow for Dumfries and Galloway Arts Association. In August 2015 he became the inaugural Scots Scriever, a residency established by the National Library of Scotland and Creative Scotland to encourage creative work in Scots and increase awareness and use of the language. MacDonald has had a long-running association with the Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival, both as a performer and as an organiser of its Verb Garden literary and spoken-word venue. In 2016 he curated the Verb Garden programme, which included a poetry slam alongside talks, interviews and other spoken-word events. In 2018, The Press and Journal described him as the Verb Garden's event programmer. In a 2021 interview, MacDonald listed running the Verb Garden among his career highlights. He was again curating and hosting the venue in 2022. MacDonald has also performed at Belladrum, including a poetry and song set in 2017 and a Verb Garden poetry appearance in 2024. During the residency he developed the National Library's Wee Windaes website, which presents digitised material written and published in Scots. Wee Windaes later received Project o the Year at the 2020 Scots Language Awards.

MacDonald has written and presented programmes for BBC Radio Scotland, including The Spirit of Invergordon and The Scot Who Stayed in Argentina. In 2020 he became the "Bankies Bard", the official bard of Clydebank F.C., after publishing the football poetry collection Kilbowie Dreams.

In 2022 MacDonald won the Scottish Slam Poetry Championship. He later represented Scotland at the Coupe du Monde de Poésie in Paris, where he was runner-up, and reached the semi-finals of the World Poetry Slam Organisation finals in Rio de Janeiro in 2023.

MacDonald also worked with researchers at the University of St Andrews on Papusza's narrative poem Tears of Blood. His English poetic translation was published as part of a scholarly edition of the poem in 2024.

His poetry collection Wilson's Ornithology & Burds in Scots, combining poems in Scots with the bird illustrations of Alexander Wilson, was published by Scotland Street Press in 2020. His subsequent collection Square Baw, centred on Scottish football, family history and working-class life, was published in 2025 after receiving a Scots Language Publication Grant. The book was shortlisted for Scots Book o the Year at the 2026 Scots Language Awards.

Selected works

Books

  • Skeleton (Clydeside Press, 1995)
  • The Gravy Star (11:9 Publishing, 2001)
  • The Girnin Gates, published with Sheena Blackhall's Loon as Double Heider: Twa Novellas in Scots (Itchy Coo, 2003)
  • Wilson's Ornithology & Burds in Scots (Scotland Street Press, 2020)
  • Kilbowie Dreams (Clydebank Football Club, 2020)
  • Square Baw (Scotland Street Press, 2025)

Selected plays

  • Redcoats, Turncoats & Petticoats
  • The Captain's Collection
  • The Strathspey King
  • Factor 9