I suppose it all began when I was a child. The earliest holidays I can remember were to places like Cullercoats and Dunbar on the east coast. Later on we went to Girvan and Dunoon in the west, but it was always to the coast we went on holiday. Somewhere there’s a small black and white photo of me being hurled in a pushchair to Cullercoats beach. I can still remember the long journey we took every day through a residential suburb to get there but not the beach itself. Dunbar was different. I must have been a year or two older by that time and I can still recall swimming in the icy waters of its outdoor pool. One boiling hot summer when the road tar melted, with my pals I played cricket with Ronnie Simpson, the Scotland goalkeeper, on the sand at the Cauld Shore in Girvan. Many years later I revisited that shore one dark night and wrote a poem about hearing the voices of the dead whispering in the wind. But it was Dunoon that became a second home to our family, and it was here, or more precisely in Kirn, that I came to love the coast and to want to live by the sea one day.

What I especially loved about the Kirn Lido where we went each day was that I could scramble along the rocky shore, explore the rock pools, wonder at their hermit crabs, darting shrimps and maroon anemones, and could go out in a rowing boat, ship the oars and lie back and listen to the sea chortling under its varnished sides. Clyde steamers still called in at Kirn Pier in those days and we used to row out to get as close as possible to catch their stern waves and bob into them to impress their passengers and each other.

The great thing was that if you helped Reggie Brooks, the boat hirer, to lift the boats down in the morning and back at night and helped the holidaymakers to get in and out of them from the gangway, you could take a boat out for free and pretend you were a master mariner. That my Gran Jessie Moore worked in the ice cream kiosk, and later the tearoom that was built just above the shore, was an extra bonus. Many a wet afternoon was spent nursing a soft drink and looking out through misted windows at the grey waves that came rolling across the firth. It didn’t matter that the mackerel we caught and the sea we swam in were polluted by radioactive discharges from the nearby American nuclear submarine base in the Holy Loch. We were oblivious to this danger and were happy living in the moment of our teenage years.

My parents wanted to retire to Dunoon and bought a flat overlooking the East Bay where you could watch the CalMac ferry coming across from Gourock and walk round to meet it at Dunoon Pier. Sadly it wasn’t to be, for my Mum’s ill health and death prevented them from realising their dream. I’m not sure exactly when, but it must have been around that time that I began to look for a place by the coast where I could spend the rest of my life.

One Easter I bought an Island Rover ticket and fitted in as many islands from Islay to Lewis as I could in a week. The following summer I drove right up the west coast to Cape Wrath and back down via Dornoch and the Black Isle in search of that special place to live. However, it was to the Isle of Luing in Argyll that I was drawn after I came across it one bright May morning. That day I visited Toberonochy on Luing’s east coast and was charmed by its white-washed cottages and hanging baskets. At Blackmill Bay, Scarba loomed large like some west coast Bali Hai. But as I came round the corner towards Cullipool, I was bowled over by the sight that befell me. A string of islands in the midst of a sparkling blue sea, the long coast of Mull stretching out towards the Atlantic, and Fladda lighthouse twinkling white in the vast ocean. I fell in love with it at once and pulled up the car to knock on the door of a house with a For Sale sign outside. That wasn’t to be, but, after several years of searching, l eventually found a cottage in the Conservation Village of Cullipool which suits me down to the ground.

Fladda Lighthouse

Of course, geopoetics can be practised anywhere – whether it be urban, rural, island or mainland – since it’s a heightened way of perceiving and expressing the world we live in, but it does involve becoming much more aware of the natural environment of which we are part and that’s certainly made easier if you’re living by the shore and able to witness Atlantic weather systems approaching and basking sharks and otters feeding along the coast. That said, these last five years living on Luing haven’t exactly worked out as I had expected. I’ve been writing a feature film script and a memoir rather than the poems inspired by this beautiful place that I’d intended, and I’ve been taking an active part in the Isle of Luing Community Trust and its successful efforts to obtain funding to build an Atlantic Islands Centre here as a focus for the regeneration of the Luing community. You can take the boy out of Glasgow …

However, in a way this coastline has inspired all of this activity since it has given me the urge to be more creative and to reconnect with the childhood I spent both in the city and by the sea. I have found the coast where I want to spend the rest of my days and the coast has helped me to find myself and to lead a productive life. The Community Trust interpretation panels which are scattered around the island bear the legend ‘The Isle of Luing: a place to think, a place to be’. And that’s exactly how it feels now that my life’s journey has brought me to these shores.