Ian McMillan
Ian McMillan is a poet, journalist, playwright and broadcaster. He has had several volumes of poetry published for both adults and children, and is an enthusiastic advocate of poetry.
In addition he has had journalism published in Q magazine and Mojo magazine, and writes a weekly column in his home town's local newspaper, The Barnsley Chronicle. He has the unique honour of being the first poet in residence to a football club, his hometown Barnsley FC.
'NEWS FROM MY FOLD-UP TABLE'
This is where I write, in the back room of my house in Darfield, the same house I’ve lived in for over twenty-five years. I used to write at the dining table, the table that used to be my mother’s, but when we got a new one I found that it was just a bit too high and it made my shoulders ache, so now I sit and write at a little white fold-up table.
I’m a writer because of many things, I guess: my Great Aunt Bella Howatson was a Scottish Victorian rhyming balladeer and she used to write rhyming letters to my dad; my dad and mam were penpals in the Second World War, him in the Royal Navy, her in the WAAFs and because they met through writing maybe that’s another reason for writing being important to me; I was lucky enough to go to a West Rising County Primary School in the 1960s…the West Riding was a marvellous Education Authority run by the godlike genius Alec Clegg, who said that all children are creative, so we wrote a poem at the end of every lesson until it became as natural as breathing; I had a great teacher at Wath Grammar School called Mr. Brown who got me to carry on writing and improving my poems until they were good enough to put in the school magazine.
I write all the time on this little fold-up table; for the last few years I’ve been writing plays and scripts and words for music but suddenly, over the last few months, the poems are coming again, and I’m as grateful as heck.
— Ian McMillan, October 2011
PLATFORM 2
We are both waiting and he comes over to me,
His cap is dark. I found my dad
He says, as though he knows me. Good I say,
That’s good. His cap, his cap is dark.
At stair bottom Ian. He’d hung hissen.
His cap, his cap, his cap is dark.
He must have been low, Ian, to do that
Does tha think? His cap, his cap, his cap, his
Cap is dark. I allus get a return ticket,
Just in case. His cap, his cap, his cap, his cap
You know the rest
— Ian McMillan, This Lake Used to be Frozen: Lamps (Smith/Doorstop, 2011)
Smith/Doorstop titles
Tall in the Saddle (1986) [OUT OF PRINT]
This Lake Used to be Frozen: Lamps (2011)
In The North magazine
Issue 1 (1985) — poems
Issue 42 (2008) — poems
Publicity
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