Advertisement
Presenters |
 |
|
 Ian McMillan "With McMillan, you feel a draught coming from the blast of fresh air blowing through the dusty cobwebs that festoon most literary programmes." Sue Arnold, The Observer Review. Barnsley FC poet-in-residence and Beat Poet for Humberside Police, Ian McMillan says of his new series: "What I want for The Verb is that excitement you get when you go to somebody's house for the first time, you look at their bookshelves and think, 'I've never read that', 'I used to have that', 'I must read that'. It's the magic of discovery, the excitement of living language, stories, songs, the continuum of audience and writer and reader." Ian McMillan has been a poet, broadcaster, commentator and programme maker since 1981. He has explored language & communication with schoolchildren, students, teachers, education policy makers, politicians, public services & corporate businesses. He has written a number of poetry books for adults: Selected Poems (1987), Dad, the Donkey's on Fire (1994), I Found This Shirt (1998) and Perfect Catch (2000). He has also had a selection of his poems published for children: Elephant Dreams (1998), with Paul Cookson and David Harmer, The Very Best of Ian McMillan (2001) and The Invisible Villain (2002). His other writing has included four one-woman shows for performer Ruth Curtis: Fiction, Waves, The Phone Show and Out of This World, and journalism for Q, Mojo, Poetry Review and The Yorkshire Post. He has written poems for BBC1's Football Focus, Yorkshire TV's Calendar, Radio 5 Live's Sport on 5, Breakfast Show & Drive and Sky News, and has had specially commissioned poems featured in The Evening Standard & The Observer. His performance work has included thousands of gigs since the mid-seventies. Ian started out in folk clubs, performing under the name of Oscar the Frog, singing Chattanooga Choo-Choo while eating a packet of plain crisps, and not swallowing. He performed with Circus of Poets for ten years, and for three years with his long-standing collaborator, the late Martyn Wiley, as Yakety Yak. His broadcasting has included co-writing three series of The Blackburn Files and two series of Richard Matthewman for BBC Radio 4, as well as co-presenting with Martyn Wiley a Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides, a recreation of Johnson & Boswell's Highland journey. He was also one of the featured poets on Mark Radcliffe's Radio 1 shows. Until very recently, he was Words Development Worker for DARTS, Doncaster Community Arts, working with musicians, dancers and visual artists. At DARTS he wrote and performed for Songship, a theatre show for under-5's and Jacket In, a drug awareness show for junior schools. Ian McMillan is Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Northern College, near Barnsley. He is also Barnsley FC's poet-in-residence, Yorkshire TV's Investigative Poet and Mobile Bard of the late Northern Spirit rail network. In Spring 2002 he was Humberside Police's Beat Poet - the World's first poet-in-residence with a police force. Ian was born in 1956 and lives on the edge of Barnsley with his wife, Catherine, who he met when he was 14, and his three children. |
|
On Radio 3 NowRelated Links on radio 3 on bbc.co.uk on the web The BBC is not responsible for the content of external websites. |
|
|
|
© MMIXThis page is best viewed in an up-to-date web browser with style sheets (CSS) enabled. While you will be able to view the content of this page in your current browser, you will not be able to get the full visual experience. Please consider upgrading your browser software or enabling style sheets (CSS) if you are able to do so.