{"id":6180,"date":"2014-01-06T09:00:38","date_gmt":"2014-01-06T09:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=6180"},"modified":"2020-12-09T14:35:48","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T14:35:48","slug":"william-bedford-reviews-andrew-mcmillans-protest-of-the-physical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/william-bedford-reviews-andrew-mcmillans-protest-of-the-physical\/","title":{"rendered":"William Bedford reviews Andrew McMillan’s ‘protest of the physical’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I\u2019ve woken up with protest of the physical <\/em>running through my mind. McMillan has a voice which surprises you, and a deep poetic theory behind the voice. It is almost as if I\u2019m surprised \u2013 even after the wonderful the moon is a supporting player<\/em> – walking into a room and finding this poet there, because the \u2018rooms\u2019 are so crowded these days. But McMillan stands alone, even when you hear Thom Gunn \u2013 say \u2013 singing in the subtext. I\u2019m sure I was partly moved because I remember so vividly buying The Sense of Movement<\/em> about a thousand years ago, when I was a boy, and stumbling upon a poem about Elvis \u2013 did poets know about Elvis too, I thought! This is remarkable stuff, making strange as the early Gunn made strange, and with a gift so lightly worn you might easily miss just how deep it is.<\/p>\n

The texture of McMillan\u2019s world is easy enough to recognise and acknowledged in the notes: quotations from Ivor Gurney and Virginia Woolf jostle with Thom Gunn\u2019s Collected Poems<\/em> and Tadeuz Rozewicz\u2019s recycling<\/em>. The physical<\/em> of the title demands our fullest attention, from Virginia Woolf\u2019s \u201cI have to bang my hand against some door to bring myself back to the body\u201d, to Thom Gunn\u2019s affirmation that \u201che will live \/ here, morning by morning\u201d. It is research into Gunn\u2019s letters which took McMillan from Barnsley to Berkeley University, and a rich word-horde of imagery comes from the journey, whether of \u201cthe day chasing its own shadow\u201d on Shambles Street in Barnsley or the graffiti of Ocean Beach in San Francisco, and the poet\u2019s laconic, American accented \u201cdon\u2019t be afraid \/ to put ya toes \/ in the sand\u201d.<\/p>\n

But what is most moving about protest of the physical<\/em> is the conversation going on between the images. If I\u2019m right in thinking there is a theory between the lines of the poems, it may be to do with how we love, and prevent love, \u201chow thin the membranes that we build \/ between each other\u201d. This is definitely something to do with the dualism which separates mind and body, so that \u201cwe\u2019ve confused happiness \/ with someone being able to say our name to us\u201d and \u201chalf the people here only know the outside \/ exists because they talk to it through \/ high strung wires while they dream \/ of being recognised on the street\u201d. The \u2018here\u2019 is of course everywhere, and when \u201ca crowd gathers\u201d to see whether a man will commit suicide, \u201csome are concerned \/ a few shout encouragement\u00a0\u00a0 most \/ just want to see what happens when the man jumps\u201d.<\/p>\n

This might sound like a bleak world, but it doesn\u2019t feel<\/em> like that. And the feeling<\/em> is in the poetry, if I may make an artificial distinction. The poetry hints at transcendence, even if only as something we all hope for. What the waiting crowd \u201cwant to see\u201d is the victim\u2019s arms \u201cgrasp the invisible ladder\u00a0\u00a0 his elation … his regret\u201d because it is such invisible ladders that occupy our own dreams. Love is obviously at the heart of this, and most obviously accounts for the ghost of Thom Gunn haunting protest of the physical<\/em>. The Gunn of Touch<\/em> and The Man with the Night Sweats<\/em>. \u201cI could have \/ I should have tried harder\u201d McMillan says in the final lines of his new pamphlet, yet his language makes a quite exquisite, sometimes Pinteresque music of love with perfectly pitched cadences of speech: \u201cthere are days \/ when I don\u2019t miss you . . . or even love you \/ that much . . . anymore\u201d; frightening but brilliant imagery of \u201cthe wheezing orchestra of the future\u201d; physical intimacy \u201cwhich means knowing \/ the exact taste of someone else\u2019s \/ sleep in their mouth on waking\u201d; and a vigorous tenderness we haven\u2019t heard since the seventeenth century: \u201cyour kiss was deep enough to stand in\u201d. \u201cRead this. Then read it again and again\u201d Helen Mort said in her own review. One waits with wonder to see where Andrew McMillan\u2019s first full-length collection will take us.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Order your copy of Andrew McMillan, protest of the physical (Red Squirrel Press, 2013) pp.27, \u00a35.00p<\/em>. HERE<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve woken up with protest of the physical running through my mind. McMillan has a voice which surprises you, and a deep poetic theory behind the voice. It is almost as if I\u2019m surprised \u2013 even after the wonderful the moon is a supporting player – walking into a room and finding this poet there, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6180"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23712,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6180\/revisions\/23712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}