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Reading lists

12 must-read queer books

Flat lay of 12 poetry books against a bright red background

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12 poetry collections to help you understand the world

playtime

The prize-winning poet’s brilliant second collection

[An] equally page-turning second collection… McMillan is 30, but writes with the melancholy understatement for an older writer… McMillan’s pared-back style puts great weight on each word, often with magnetic results… McMillan wears his influences on his sleeve – Thom Gunn, Sharon Olds’s explicit Odes, a flicker of Book of Matches-era Simon Armitage – yet brings them together in a voice that is confident, captivating and distinctly his own… Any fans of physical worrying how McMillan could top one of the most widely praised debuts of recent years should breathe a sigh of relief: playtime may be a quieter collection, but it’s a deeper, richer one too.

Andrew McMillan’s second collection, playtime, is every bit as impressive as his first, physical… He seems attuned to the world around him and he has a sly sense of humour at his command. He is more than promising now.

[In playtime] McMillan makes it clear that the poetics of physical wasn’t a one-off. As with all the best second outings, this collection firmly establishes his patent… [a] fully realised, deeply humane collection.

McMillan scrutinises the violent idealism of masculinity in monologues that are both tender and steely… told with courage, invention and charm.

Andrew McMillan's award-winning debut collection, physical, a raw and tender exploration of gay love and desire, heralded him as a new force in contemporary poetry. This, his second book, only cements that reputation... these poems are insightful, revealing, honest and brutally tender.

playtime is admirably devoted to intimacies and it has a tenderness to it even in its most private of moments... This is a triumphant collection of poems.

By returning to familiar ground and deepening his engagement with it, McMillan makes clear that the poetics of physical wasn’t a one-off. As with all the best second outings, this collection firmly establishes his patent… [a] fully realised, deeply humane collection.

Vivid, accessible and honest, sometimes uncomfortably so.

An unobstructed exploration of an important subject. McMillan is writing not only see-through but see-beyond poetry.

Andrew McMillan's first collection, physical, was the first poetry collection to win the Guardian First Book Award; it also won a Somerset Maugham Award, an Eric Gregory Award, a Northern Writers' Award and the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize. His second collection, playtime, won the inaugural Polari Prize, and his most recent collection is pandemonium. His debut novel, Pity, was published by Canongate in 2024. McMillan is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Writing School at Manchester Metropolitan University and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

**WINNER OF THE POLARI PRIZE 2019** 
 
‘Vivid, accessible and honest, sometimes uncomfortably so’ Alan Bennett, London Review of Books 
 
In these intimate, sometimes painfully frank poems, Andrew McMillan takes us back to childhood and early adolescence to explore the different ways we grow into our sexual selves and our adult identities. Examining our teenage rites of passage: those dilemmas and traumas that shape us – eating disorders, masturbation, loss of virginity – the poet examines how we use bodies, both our own and other people’s, to chart our progress towards selfhood. 
 
McMillan’s award-winning debut collection, physical, was praised for a poetry that was tight and powerful, raw and tender, and playtime expands that narrative frame and widens the gaze. Alongside poems in praise of the naivety of youth, there are those that explore the troubling intersections of violence, masculinity, class and sexuality, always taking the reader with them towards a better understanding of our own physicality. ‘isn’t this what human kind was made for’, McMillan asks in one poem, ‘telling stories learning where the skin/is most in need of touch’. These humane and vital poems are confessions, both in the spiritual and personal sense; they tell us stories that some of us, perhaps, have never found the courage to read before.

Physical

An extraordinary debut from a 26-year-old poet 
 
Winner of the 2015 Guardian First Book Award 
Winner of the 2015 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize 
Shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Poetry Prize 
Shortlisted for the 2015 Forward Prize for Best First Collection

When Andrew McMillan published his first poetry collection, physical, in 2015, the response was extraordinary. A tidal wave of praise pouring in from all sides marked it out as the sort of once-in-a-generation debut that causes everyone to sit up and take notice... physical was a collection unlike any other.

Andrew McMillan's award-winning debut collection, physical, a raw and tender exploration of gay love and desire, heralded him as a new force in contemporary poetry.

Andrew McMillan’s wide-awake debut anatomises male desire and its often thwarted expressions; these fresh and engaging poems enter the temple of longing in honest search for what may be found there, which turns out to be joy, desolation, secret languages, the possibilities of transformation and of disappointment borne in every touch.

physical really announces Andrew McMillan and it feels like a long while since a first book has managed this degree of tenderness and candour, sensuality and vulnerability. “There is beauty in the ordinary”, and every poem in this urgent, unflinching, exceptional debut affirms this.

Thom Gunn, the lodestar of this collection, said that poetry comes from obsession and passion. Few first books are as passionate, as carnal, as this one. McMillan’s work is a glorious, vivid exploration of the body as the loved and broken ground on which we meet and are transformed.

Unforced, unbidden, these are poems that call you by your real name, poems that have seen you naked, poems that find out your secrets and gift them back. Physical is alive with subtle reflections on masculinity, love and loss; a record of how we forget ourselves and how we remember. It will captivate and change you.

His seriousness of tone and address is electrifyingly fresh and lyrical. He takes the weight of language seriously but balances it with play and deft control…Andrew McMillan is already a poet of considerable achievement.

His language makes a quite exquisite, sometimes Pinteresque music of love with perfectly pitched cadences of speech.

McMillan has the power to titillate and disturb in each of the poems that he writes whilst also…constructing poems the like of which I have never seen or read before. It is playful and also perturbing, saucy and sensual as well as being masculine and moving.

Minutely observed, bold yet understated, moving and often profound in the same breath, Physical is a book everyone should read.

Here in these pages, along with the stunning imagery. Innovation of form and the poised breathing rhythm, there is a sensitivity and honesty about gay love, longing and loss that is powerful, revealing, and very beautiful.

There is absolutely no aspect of desire that McMillan does not articulate in phrases and images that have stayed with me ever since I first read it. Some of these poems, I suspect, will be in anthologies hundreds of years from now.

An elegantly poised and intimae collection of poems.

McMillan’s writing floored me. It is funny, frank and addictive.

A highly accomplished collection that presages a bright future for this young poet.

A collection of homoerotic poems that are febrile, tender, and written with an unwavering apprehension of beauty.

Physical is a stunning, raw and direct look at what it is to be male. It celebrates the male physique in all its forms as much as it celebrates the foibles of the male species […] I cannot wait to see what Andrew McMillan creates next.

My favourite book this year… A meditation on masculinity both frail and robust.  McMillan’s book was the standout on a strong shortlist.

[McMillan’s] poems are raw, intimate and physical explorations of love, invoking the spirit of Thom Gunn’s visceral poems and essays… McMillan’s stunning poems are unflinching and palpably real.

Raw and urgent, these poems are hymns to the male body… This is poetry where every instance of human connection, from the casual encounter to the intimate relationship, becomes redeemable and revelatory.

Reading it is less like reading poetry, more like wandering through someone’s heart and then out into a wild northern night out… We were all struck by Andrew’s unflinching portrayal of everyday human intimacies and awkwardnesses.

It’s almost as though McMillan ripped his heart out and pinned it dripping to the pages of this short book… I very much enjoyed this collection of poems — it took me right out of my comfort zone but I was in good hands. Yes, some of it is confronting and occasionally shocking, but the honesty…lends an exquisite beauty to McMillan’s work.

I’ve read some great poetry collections this year, but nothing as startlingly visceral and beautiful as Andrew McMillan’s Physical.

McMillan’s powerful collection explores and interrogates masculinity with frank honesty.

McMillan…is a natural communicator and his material – sexuality, the body, masculinity – are urgent topics for our time.

*Winner of the 2015 Guardian First Book Award* 
 
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 McMillan’s own colloquial Yorkshire rhythms with a sinewy, Metaphysical music and Thom Gunn’s 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. 
 
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’s eye and ear are tuned, exactly, to both the mechanics of the body and the miracles of the heart. 
 
Winner of the 2015 Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize 
Shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Poetry Prize 
Shortlisted for the 2015 Forward Prize for Best First Collection

partings

The poems in Andrew McMillan’s deeply moving fourth collection present a series of separations. Lovers, long-term and fleeting, part ways; the self, as we know it, becomes estranged from itself; the poetic line fractures – splits apart – in order to let in breath, take stock: so raw memories may close, and slowly heal. 
 
With stark honesty, and no hint of self-righteousness, these poems weigh up complicity and blame, attending closely to the love and anger buried beneath the surface of every life, every relationship – excavating it with the poet’s precision and clarity of thought. 
There are poems that call upon Robinson Crusoe, Michelangelo, or Achilles, their presence confirming the timeless universality of this most human theme: how we must pass through loss, grow beyond grief. 
 
With his usual close attention, McMillan examines emotional history and its rupture – ‘when what used to feel so heavy is just dust on the shelf and in the hand’ – and what possibilities might begin to emerge in the aftermath. This book examines individual memories, objects, messages and moments, using them to work towards an ultimate reckoning: what is it that might remain after everything we held certain has gone?

An achingly beautiful new collection about a break-up and its losses, sorrows and eventual solace 
 
The poems in Andrew McMillan’s deeply moving fourth collection present a series of separations. Lovers, long-term and fleeting, part ways; the self, as we know it, becomes estranged from itself; the poetic line fractures – splits apart – in order to let in breath, take stock: so raw memories may close, and slowly heal. 
 
With stark honesty, and no hint of self-righteousness, these poems weigh up complicity and blame, attending closely to the love and anger buried beneath the surface of every life, every relationship – excavating it with the poet’s precision and clarity of thought. 
 
There are poems that call upon Robinson Crusoe, Michelangelo, or Achilles, their presence confirming the timeless universality of this most human theme: how we must pass through loss, grow beyond grief. 
 
With his usual close attention, McMillan examines emotional history and its rupture – ‘when what used to feel so heavy is just dust on the shelf and in the hand’ – and what possibilities might begin to emerge in the aftermath. This book examines individual memories, objects, messages and moments, using them to work towards an ultimate reckoning: what is it that might remain after everything we held certain has gone?

Andrew McMillan

A moving exploration of mental health.

i, Entertainment to look forward to this Spring

A fascinating collection - troubling and moving to read... McMillan has mastered the art of self-reproach... [an] exceptional vigil of a book.

*A 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK IN THE GUARDIAN, FINANCIAL TIMES AND IRISH TIMES CULTURE* 
 
After two prize-winning collections which examined the intimacies and intricacies of the physical body, McMillan's third book marks a shift: both inward, into the difficult world of mental health, and outwards into the natural and political world. 
 
Keeping his trademark breath-space and lower-case lines, but more formally experimental, incorporating sequences and sonnets, the poems in pandemonium explore the fragility and depth of the human mind - in its panic and its troubled retreat - and map this turmoil onto the chaos and abundance of the garden. Depression is mirrored in the invasive, seemingly untreatable knotweed that slowly suffocates the garden, while the sky conspires in its sudden, terrifying clarity, 'as though the root of the world were ripped clean off'. 
 
McMillan has been celebrated for his unflinchingly frank depictions of the body and sexual love, but these new poems are raw dispatches from a mind in freefall, a body in trouble. Addressing a period of acute depression, they are less about physical union and completeness and more about fracture and distance: tender, savagely moving poems which stare, unblinkingly, into the sudden havoc and hurt of this world, searching for - and finally finding - some redemption.

Andrew McMillan

Praise for pandemonium

A moving exploration of mental health.

A fascinating collection - troubling and moving to read... McMillan has mastered the art of self-reproach... [an] exceptional vigil of a book.

Books by Andrew McMillan

Articles featuring Andrew McMillan

12 must-read queer books

12 poetry collections to help you understand the world

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