5 questions with Andrew McMillan
On one level itâs simply that itâs how I make sense of the world; Â how I redeem certain things that Iâm not particularly proud of, or just the way I find to live through certain things which might be happening at any given time. Beyond that I suppose thereâs a high-minded idea that it might be âusefulâ in that Sharon Olds-ian sense, for other people to see something theyâve also experienced articulated in a new way. On a very straightforward level, its because I love reading, and I think we begin by reading and then trying to emulate that. On a practical level, obviously I grew up around poetry, which is not to say thatâs why I write (whatever your parents do becomes egregiously embarrassing for most of your teenage life) but it gave me a sense that a poet was a living tangible thing, it was something someone did, or could do. I suppose thatâs not really why I write, but I think a lack of access to envisioning that one could literally be a poet is probably something which stops a lot of people who could write (beyond the obvious socio-economic factors)
I read that you recommend aspiring poets to read 100 poems a day and I can see from twitter (@AMcMillanPoet) that you are a voracious reader, do you keep up with your edict? Why is reading so important?
I think (hope) when I said that I was probably going for hyperbole, but I guess I do think reading is more important than writing. Â I certainly donât keep up with my own edict, and Iâve been reading much less since my anxiety spiked during the pandemic, but I do try and read every day. Iâve never understood that idea of writing every day, itâs certainly not something I can do. But I think I try and do something connected to it every day, so some days that might just be sending an email, reading student work, reading a new collection, listening to a podcast, an audiobook- trying to immerse myself in that world as much as possible, whilst still leaving room for other things. I think reading, widely and variedly, reading things we donât like, reading beyond our own narrowness of style, is how we keep shifting the thing we might call âvoiceâ, but really our way of looking at the world, our own lens through which we view things. Â We all started writing because we loved reading, and I think its important to return to that.
Your debut collection âphysicalâ was hugely successful, winning the Guardian First Book Award and many other prizes, did this early success put any pressure on you for the 2nd and 3rd collections? Or did it fill you with confidence?
It was very early success (I was in my mid-twenties when physical came out) and it all happened very quickly, and was running parallel to some of the most difficult years of my personal life (which I write more about in pandemonium) so Iâve only started to get my head around everything that happened really. I guess, in relation to your question, itâs a little of both. With my second book I knew it would have a readership, I assumed at least a portion of the people who bought the first one would at least buy the second one whether they ended up liking it or not, and so there wasnât the sense that there always is with a first collection of somehow throwing something into a void and waiting to see what happens. I also had a very practical outlook which was knowing that the ârunâ that physical had in terms of what it was nominated for etc was a really once in a lifetime thing, I know that Iâll never have a book like that again, and thatâs OK, after a first collection it becomes I think about building a lifeâs work, some of which will be quieter, some of which will maybe be louder. I donât think youâre ever not scared, and certainly I never have confidence in the work particularly. When my second book came out someone said to me âIâll buy this one, but Iâll buy the famous one as wellâ; I guess thatâs just something Iâll carry around throughout my writing career, and I think Iâm very lucky to have that.  I also think that at some point it will just be over, these things are always very transient.  I listened to a podcast with a comedian, and he just described this idea that the end of his career would be him turning up to a gig and nobody came, and he just goes home to his wife and says âwell, thatâs that thenâ. And I like that idea, at some point I wonât have any poems left, or I will but nobody will read them and then I can just come home and say to my boyfriend  âwell, thatâs that thenâ, and put the kettle on.
Like some of your contemporaries (AK Blakemore, Sophie Robinson, Danez Smith, Rupi Kaur) you opt for lower case letters in your poetry, why?
It started out as a direct impersonation of some poets Iâd read in an anthology called The Children of Albion, edited by the late Michael Horowitz; alongside that stylistic borrowing, I was writing very quiet, little personal poems which felt as though they were whispering, and so didnât need capital letters. Once you remove capital letters it has knock on effects, visually, for other things like punctuation. And so it just developed slowly from there; I still wanted it to feel controlled, and so I have my own rules. Capital letters for proper nouns, three spaces for a comma, six for a full stop etc⌠Iâve never met anyone who speaks in âproperâ punctuation, I wanted something which felt intimate, something closer to breath.
I really like the âSwanâ sequence in your latest collection pandemonium, written after Matthew Bourneâs version of Swan Lake, it is always nice to read poetry inspired by other art forms. What are some recent cultural highlights for you?
Thank you. Iâm still finding my way back out into the post-pandemic world. A couple of novels Iâve been lucky enough to read in proof that are coming out next year really blew me away, Okechukwu Nzeluâs Here Again Now and Ashley Hickson-Lovenceâs Your Show. So look out for those. We went to see Nomadland in the cinema and I thought there were some achingly beautiful moments in it, the last few shots of the film in particular. Iâve been getting into Audiobooks too, anxiety has made it really hard for me to concentrate on physical novels; Heatwave, by Victor Jestin, translated by Sam Taylor, is a wonderful novella; kind of like The Tell-Tale Heart but everyone is sweaty and in speedos. Â Rumaan Aliâs Leave the World Behind is brilliant too. I also have very much enjoyed the quiz show The Wheel on BBC 1 , and hope it will return for a full series in the autumn.
pandemonium is available from Jonathan Cape
pixelskylines
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amandla
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