Palma McKeown
Welcome! I’m Palma McKeown, a poet exploring memory, family and, occasionally, the surreal. I am passionate about making poetry accessible to the general reader so that it’s not too highfalutin (i.e. incomprehensible) but not too Pot Noodle (i.e. instant but not necessarily well-crafted). I hope you enjoy what you find here.
Please bear with me as I construct this website – I know as much about IT as I know about rocket science (i.e. not much). The struggle is real. But let’s forget about all that complicated stuff and have a look at a poem…
Understandably, people struggle with names they’re not used to hearing. My Italian grandparents were called Mariano and Raffaella but the local Scots were having none of that and just called them Jimmy and Nelly. Palma too is not a common forename in Scotland and, over the years, I have been called many things. Here’s a poem I wrote about it, from my forthcoming poetry pamphlet.
My name
is not
Pamela
Paloma
Pam
Pammy
Palmer
Palma Nova
Parma Violets
Palmolive.
My name
is Palma
after my Italian
great-grandmother
born on Palm Sunday,
and palma is a palm tree.
That is where my roots lie.
My poetry pamphlet How To Be Scots-Italian will be released in August 2026 by Cadzow Publishing. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited!