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Ian McMillan
© Adrian Mealing
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the poet
Presenter of BBC Radio 3's The Verb, compère of the annual T S Eliot Prize Readings, writer, broadcaster and recent recipient of The Freedom of Barnsley, Ian McMillan is a renowned British poet who's been everywhere and done more. He's already written a verse autobiography (Talking Myself Home: My Life in Verses), and now a memoir of childhood and the sea – My Sand Life, My Pebble Life. Ian’s been a castaway on Desert Island Discs, resident poet for English National Opera, and a contestant on BBC 1's Pointless Celebrities. His most recent collection is To Fold The Evening Star: New and Selected Poems.
the poems
Half a Minute Before
the Start of the World
There was an idea. Well, more of the ghost
Of an idea. And the idea/ghost idea was
The idea of a tree. Somewhere (remember,
There was no somewhere yet)
The ghost of an idea of a tree waited
To become an idea of a tree and then
A tree. On the day before your first day
At school you are full of possibilities
In your little socks. Maybe you hold
A crayon close to a blank sheet
That almost collapses under metaphor’s
Incalculable weight. It is, look, look,
Half a minute before the start of the world
And that (insert blankness here) of a tree
Has no idea what the world has in store for it
But it dreams its leaves are burning.
Try Knocking on Your Own
Door and Opening it
Your shadow
Either side.
Lit by possibility.
This is like
Walking and sitting down
At the same time.
This is like
Being the past and the future
At the same time.
Knock now. Knock.
Both sides of the door at once.
Hearing the knock
And being the one who knocks.
Gaze through
The letterbox
At yourself,
Knocking and listening.
Listen. This is like
Writing and reading
At the same time.
The Last Speaker
of the Language
The last speaker of the language said this:
‘My words fall unnoticed; snow in a wood.
No one to talk to’s like no one to kiss.’
Nobody answered. No one understood.
The last speaker of the language lay down
On the grass only he had the words for
And felt his dry mind beginning to drown
In the sound of old sounds closed like a door.
The last speaker of the language looked up
At what he called something I call the sun
I passed him a drink. I call it a cup:
His word for that thing is over and done.
The untitled moon set fire to the night.
When languages die, who says the last rites?
Publishing credits
All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb
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