McMillan - Physical

Raw and urgent, these poems are hymns to the male body to male friendship and male love muscular, sometimes shocking, but always deeply moving. We are witness here to an almost religious celebration of the flesh: a flesh vital with the vulnerability of love and loss, to desire and its departure. In an extraordinary blend of McMillans own colloquial Yorkshire rhythms with a sinewy, Metaphysical music and Thom Gunns torque and speed your kiss was deep enough to stand in the poems in this first collection confront what it is to be a man and interrogate the very idea of masculinity. This is poetry where every instance of human connection, from the casual encounter to the intimate relationship, becomes redeemable and revelatory. There is, at the end of everything, a sense of hope. Dispensing with conventional punctuation, the poet is attentive and alert to the quality of breathing, giving the work an extraordinary sense of being vividly poised and present drawing lines that are deft, lyrical and perfectly pitched from a world of urban dereliction.

An elegant stylist and unfashionably honest poet, McMillan believes that writing something down/keeps it alive, and his eye and ear are tuned, exactly, to both the mechanics of the body and the miracles of the heart.

Andrew McMillan was born in South Yorkshire in 1988 and lectures in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University. In 2014 he won a substantial Northern Writers Award. He currently lives in Manchester. 1. is for Andy and Matt 3. is for Steffan 4. is for Liz 5. has in its background the celebrations held in some South Yorkshire villages after the death of Margaret Thatcher 6. takes each fourth line from Thom Gunns Saturday Night 7. was first inspired by Paul Delvauxs painting Leda 8. was written as part of the Viking Poets project thanks to Debbie Potts for getting me involved won first prize in the 2012 Live Canon Poetry Competition was first published as a pamphlet by Red Squirrel Press thanks to Sheila Wakefield for all her support over the years thanks to New Writing North whose award of a substantial Northern Writing Award helped with the writing of this book thanks also to Carol Gorner and the Gordon Burn Trust for the kind use of the cottage where this collection was finished thanks to Robin Robertson for all his editorial input and support thanks to Sean Hewitt Sarah Hymas Kim Moore Helen Mort Okey Nzelu David Tait Thomas Stewart Alicia Stubbersfield and all the others who provided invaluable help with these poems thanks to the editors of the following magazines and anthologies in which earlier versions of some of these poems appeared Astronaut Cast: The Poetry Business Book of New Contemporary Poets Eyewear In the Red Magma Modern Poetry in Translation Sculpted: Poetry of the North West Shearsman The Best British Poetry 2013 The Rialto thanks to Steffan and Gerard with all my love for letting me write what we had taken literally it just happens the way the weather or the stock market happens tangling in the unpierced flesh of one another grappling with the shifting question of each others bodies until the morning breaks across them and still their strength no soft parts of stomachs no inch of them hung loose like old sacking from the muscle and burning afterwards or barely able to walk afterwards or not giving a name because names would add a history and the tasting of the flesh and blood of someone is something out of time taken allegorically he is beating on himself until the point at which the inner river of the word grace runs past and everything lays down in calm and walking back across the stream to his possessions he feels the bruise that is staining his thigh and he wonders at the strength of one so smooth and his wives and womenservants and his sons are sat waiting for the story but he sleeps without speaking and on waking isnt sure if he has dreamt it but his youngest notices the thresh marks of wingbeats on his back and he asks for ink to be brought he says writing something down keeps it alive Im scared of bumping someone while they piss those Mondays Im a packhorse bags hung swinging around the urinal bodies and one day I know Ill knock someone and theyll piss their legs or theyll turn slightly and show another man their full arc or theyll fall into their own wet puddle cock limp and neither of us will look or hell look at me avoiding looking feigning interest in the hard cream tiles maybe its that I dream of being bumped knocked from my aim by a stranger the briefest touch during the private act the toilet is an intimacy only shared with parents when you are young and once again when they are older and with lovers when say on a Sunday morning stretching into the bathroom you wake to the sound of stream into bowl and go to hug the naked body stood with its back to you and kiss the neck and taste the whole of the night on there and smell the mornings pale yellow loss and take the whole of him in your hand and feel the water moving through him and knowing that this is love the prone flesh what we expel from the body and what we let inside the men are weeping in the gym using the hand dryer to cover their sobs their hearts have grown too big for their chests their chests have grown too big for their shirts they are dressed like kids who have forgotten their games kit they are crying in the toilet and because they have built themselves as statues this must mean that God has entered them they are wringing their faces like sweat towels in the sink their veins are about to burst their banks they are flooding out of themselves onto the tiles they have turned water into protein shakes they have got too close to the mirrors they have got too close to the glass and now they are laying in the broken pools of their own faces the lines of them! at the decline press the bicep curl waiting staring straight ahead swearing that the wetness on their cheeks is perspiration that the words they mutter as they lift are meaningless that they feel nothing when the muscle tears itself from itself that they dont hear the thousands of tiny fracturings needed to build something stronger my nephew asks if I can benchpress him his mothers new lover can and often does my nephew who once said my boyfriend was illegal my nephew with his dads voice and jaw my nephew who now protests I had my hand on his balls for the first attempt I try again let both his wicket legs rest against one palm put my other to his heart and push because what is masculinity if not taking the weight of a boy and straining it from oneself? here we are a man holding a boy above him horizontal like an offering to the artex ceiling not even a minor Greek would see as fit to sculpt we are told to tell our bodies that they are beautiful we are told not to pass judgement on where the breath may fall in the dry heat of July we bend our bodies beyond their normal boundaries push past the bones until we look like unkempt foliage delirious in our own abandon we are told to root our feet into the ground we are told to hear all sounds around us as vibrations we have forgotten that the body can hold on to negativity we are told to sigh this out we are told that only empty things are light enough to fly we end by flying hoisting up our partners by our feet taking the weight on our forearms on the ground the flier feels bodiless until the heft begins to shake the legs and the architecture of the limbs collapses it needs trust in the strengthofbody of another to support your own to delay and then control the falling later showered fed and still too warm stretched out on the mattress in the new flat nothing but dust on the bare walls you pressed me down took control took me in your mouth I regret now being so passive but you made me feel weightless and the next night light gone in the hallway I felt my way to you to kiss you I had forgotten that loving could feel so calming telling you that your body was beautiful sighing out the brittle disappointments from the bones having no judgement of what the body may want to be doing where the breath may fall