Ian's verse autobiography Talking Myself Home (John Murray Publishing) came out on 4 Sept.

‘It’s impossible not to like McMillan. If they made him Poet Laureate on Friday, a lot more people would be reading poetry by Monday’ Sue Arnold, The Guardian

'great stuff' The Observer

Ian is poet-in-residence for The Academy of Urbanism and Barnsley FC. He’s UK Trade & Investment’s Poet, Yorkshire TV’s Investigative Poet and Humberside Police’s Beat Poet.

'One of my all-time heroes  -  he’s such a talented bloke, I could kill him’ Mike Harding

Ian is Visiting Professor at Bolton University . He’s an honorary doctor of Sheffield Hallam University, North Staffs Polytechnic and most recently University Centre Barnsley  -   Huddersfield University. ‘You can call me Doctor Doctor Doctor…’ 

From The Times, 5.9.08
Talking Myself Home by Ian McMillan
Reviewed by Paul Batchelor

Ian McMillan is one of the UK's best-loved poets and performers, and his new verse memoir exudes an easygoing warmth. This is a self-deprecating self-portrait, in which McMillan presents himself as the innocent bystander to a surreal life: in one episode he finds himself fronting a folk band called Oscar and the Frog, playing Acker Bilk songs on a watering can for a crowd of heavy metal fanatics (The Worst Gig Ever, June 1979).

Degree is another laugh-out-loud-funny poem about his experience of working on a building site. He quickly learns that working-class solidarity can be a one-way street (“They used to set fire to my Guardian in the cabin; / It was funny for the first three weeks”), and he soon acquires a new nickname: “We'll call thi degree cos tha's got a degree”.On a second reading, you feel the poignancy behind the humour; Degree is describing bullying after all, and there is a melancholy undertow throughout. The book begins and ends with elegies for the poet's mother, and several poems hint at the isolation that any especially bright child will experience. Adult Fiction is a hymn of praise to the library where, as a child, McMillan was often the only customer on summer evenings. The poem ends with the librarian locking up for the night:

And then she would turn the light off and lock the door
And go to her little car and drive off into the night
That was slowly turning the colour of ink and I would stand
For two minutes and then I'd walk over to the dark library
And just stand in front of the dark library.

Occasionally poignancy tips over into sentimentality, something the younger, spikier, McMillan would not have allowed. But the book's casual ease is the secret of its success. The best poems here have an attractive unbidden quality, and McMillan conveys their gift status to the reader. Dam Flask Days, 1965 is a short prose poem that describes a childhood memory of a rainy fishing expedition. The poem ends as follows:

Better than work my dad says, and for some reason he's laughing so much he's crying. Uncle Jack is cracking eggs into a cup and adding brandy. Uncle Jack fought in the war and he remembers General Mark Clark driving past him in a jeep in the desert. My dad fought in the war and he remembers carrying naked sailors back from brothels through the streets of Shanghai. But let them enjoy their eggs in the rain.

As the oddly touching last line makes clear, McMillan is reluctant to intrude on the scene: we don't find out why his father is laughing, and those hints about war memories are not pursued. Talking Myself Home has a relaxed generosity and it is impossible not to be charmed by it.

Talking Myself Home by Ian McMillan
John Murray, £10; 96pp  Buy the book here

Ian now has his own Ian McMillan Orchestra whose cd project Sharp Stories featured on The South Bank Show and at BBC Proms Plus. www.theianmcmillanorchestra.com 

For a guide to making yourself understood in  Yorkshire , try Ian’s Chelp and Chunter: How To Talk Tyke     

In 2007, Ian McMillan was appointed Yorkshire Planetarium’s Poet in Space and National Poetry Day Poet-in-Residence.  

Ian hosts hit weekly show The Verb on BBC R3, dedicated to investigating spoken words around the globe.

‘The John Peel of poetry’ Alec Finlay
'Jovial Poetic Troll’ Mark Radcliffe 

  He’s been a regular on Newsnight Review, The Mark Radcliffe Show, The Today Programme, You & Yours, Any Questions, Quote Unquote, Have I Got News For You? and now Just A Minute. Other radio includes comedy series Street and Lane written with Dave Sheasby  ‘just the right amount of playfulness to take the quotidian into the comic’ The Guardian. He’s the 22nd Most Powerful Person in Radio. It says so here in The Radio Times. 

He is Poet in Residence for The Academy of Urbanism, a cutting edge group devoted to defining & driving our urban environments.

Ian is a judge for this year's Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award.

Pete Doherty: ...he became resident poet of Barnsley football club. [Pete sings] 'It's a charmed life, double as a poet for your favourite team' and every song we would write I would try and get that in.
Sir Paul: ...and always get blown out. Have you got it in anything yet?
Pete: No. Maybe next time.
Observer Music Monthly 14.10.07

An unlikely meeting of poetry, prose and folk music. Ian McMillan, bluff Yorkshire poet and media favourite, will never be in the running for the title of world’s greatest vocalist, but there’s a winning aura of physicality to the best of his collaborations with a quintet led by the singer and multi-instrumentalist Luke Carver Goss. Fiddle, whistles and hurdy-gurdy dance in the shadows cast by McMillan’s granite-like delivery. Song of the Quarryman is an imposing opener, the urgent delivery matching the restlessness of the musicians. McMillan’s anecdotal reflections don’t take flight quite as effortlessly elsewhere, yet you can’t be too hard on a record that builds an ingenuous waltz around Royle Family-style memories of The Two Ronnies. (Taith Records TRCD 0006)'  Clive Davis, The Sunday Times

En route for Hebden Bridge!

BARNSLEY v CHELSEA, FA CUP Quarter Final, 8 Mar'08
HARRY TUFNELL’S GHOST

I saw a spectral figure sitting in the stand
He noticed I was looking and he raised a bony hand
He said ‘Now don’t be nervous lad about tomorrow’s game;
I helped to win the cup that once, and I’ll help the team again;
A goal in the last minute that I’ll push in off the post’
And I realised I was talking to Harry Tufnell’s ghost.

Harry Tufnell, what a man, the chap who scored the goal
That won the cup in 1912 had risen from his hole
To haunt the pitch at Oakwell and give the team some hope
Of beating mighty Chelsea: if they’re the shower, we’re the soap
That they will slip upon and come a southern cropper
Harry smiled and said ‘ I think you’ll beat ‘em good and proper
And then I’ll raise a glass of Barnsley Bitter in a toast!’
And I realised I was talking to Harry Tufnell’s ghost!

Harry Tufnell is a legend and by tomorrow night
We’ll have other legends basking in the light;
Men with names like Howard, Odejayi, Leon, Steele;
Men who know how towns like this one think and breathe and feel;
So get your Wembley tickets booked ‘cos one team wants it most
And yes, we’ll win: you heard it first from Harry Tufnell’s ghost!

 © Ian McMillan for Sport on Five Live

CONNECTED

Before, when you got mail,
It was a chap in a cap with a sack packed full;
Before, when you researched
You sat and sweated in a library that was just this side of dull;

And when you booked your holidays
You stood there in a queue
Behind a family of five and a pensioner or two
And life seemed so much slower, somehow;
There was acres of last week and just half a glimpse of now;

Today you click
On a mouse
And you can shop till you drop without leaving the house
And now you send 
Your blogs
Right across the globe and the photos of your dogs
Can appear on your site in the twinkling of an eye
And in a tick you get a picture back of Grandma saying Hi!
Framed against the backdrop of a California sky…


And it’s been fifteen years from before to this
And now we’re living in a universe of constant cyber bliss! 
And like the first fire in the cave
Or the first turning of The Wheel
The internet is changing how we think and speak and feel
And in the next fifteen years the net will turn and twist again
And go down murky sidestreets far beyond this Barnsley brain
And one thing’s certain: the net is here forever,
Constant as taxes, unpredictable as weather…

And before I’m dragged right under in a growing tide of spam
I’ve time for just this one last post: I click therefore I am!

© Ian McMillan, for BBC R4 Today, 7.8.06

SLOUGH RE-VISITED

Come friendly words and splash on Slough!
Celebrate it, here and now
Describe it with a gasp, a ‘wow!’
Of Sweet Berkshire breath

Slough is open, wide and green
With gorgeous buildings in between;
In the museum can be seen
Slough life, Slough death

Which show the history of a town
That people have tried to put down
By talking of it with a frown
And cruel sneers.

It’s true Slough Town don’t always win
But losing’s shrugged off with a grin;
Slough can take it on the chin
And has, for years.

Some towns are just seen as a joke
Through a fog of prejudicial smoke
Well, let’s shut up these put-down folk:
Their opinions smell!

Ask Slough people if they’re glad
To live in Slough, dismissed as bad:
Mum and dad and girl and lad
Are living well!

In 1196 it was known as Slo
and through the years it’s had to grow:
people came here ‘cos they didn’t want to go
To Maidenhead.

On foot, in coaches, trains and cars
To the factories, houses, shops and bars
They came to play or work for Mars
And stayed, and bred.

It’s people, living lives with care
And breathing in the Berkshire air
That make a town think ‘Yes, I’m there!’
And the sneering fails.

So, Children, Husband, partner, wife
Dismiss the poet’s rhyming knife
Slough’s the place to live your life
So hoist Slough’s sails!

© Ian McMillan, for VOLVIC, 19.4.05
as an antidote to John Betjeman’s take on the town