Let Us Introduce You To…

“I came out to my parents when I was 16. Mum was sitting in the same room as me and my sister while we were having an argument; I shouted something, my sister shouted back: “Well are you gay?”

I said I was. Two weeks later I was in the car with my parents on the way to my school leavers’ awards evening; some of my classmates already knew, so I had to tell my dad. He said “well done” and mum kept on driving.”

Andrew McMillan was born in South Yorkshire in 1988. His father is Ian McMillan - the poet, writer and broadcaster who presents The Verb on BBC Radio 3 every Friday night. That night he was given a copy of Thom Gunn’s Collected Poems and found someone who he felt was speaking directly to him “not of things I’d experienced but of things I wanted to experience; loves I wanted to feel. Here were gorgeous lyrics on longing and enticement, poems of casual hook-ups and drug use, images of loss and the devastation of the AIDS crisis”.

In an article he recently wrote for the Guardian, Andrew acknowledges Thom Gunn, a man who believed that poetry comes from obsession and passion, as his ‘hero’. Mark Doty describes Andrew’s own first collection Physical as a wide-awake debut that “anatomises male desire and its often thwarted expressions…engaging poems that enter the temple of longing in honest search for what may be found there…joy, desolation, secret languages, the possibilities of transformation and of disappointment borne in every touch”.

Andrew explains that Gunn is a hero to him, not in the traditional sense of the word, a strong man achieving great deeds of heroism’ but for his ability to fiercely bear witness to the world around him, remembering lives that might otherwise be forgotten… a poet who takes ordinary people, gym owners, homeless men, anonymous bodies in bars, and turns them into literature.

Physical was the first ever poetry collection to win The Guardian First Book Award. The collection also won the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection and longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. It was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2015.

At Wise Words we are passionate about offering artists the opportunity to do something they would normally not have the chance to do, to talk about or share something that touches their heart or about which they feel impassioned. Artists such as Sir Andrew Motion have described this approach as inspiring and invigorating and this is important to us - it offers our audience fresh, exciting and often unique performances - an insight into the person behind the artist.

We are delighted that Andrew and his father Ian McMillan will be performing together at Wise Words - something that they believe has not happened before. Like all our events, this will be taking place in an intimate setting with only a limited number of seats available so don’t hesitate to book as soon as tickets are on sale.

For more information about this event click HERE