You have three minutes to speed date a free thinker

Oct 11 2008 by Laura Davis, Liverpool Daily Post

A very modern poet is bringing two shows to Liverpool. Laura Davis reports

IAN MCMILLAN is very proud of being dubbed “the Shirley Bassey of performance poetry”. So much so, that he jokes he could even start impersonating the Welsh diva should he ever be hit with the eternal writer’s block.

“You always get a big show out of Shirley,” he explains. “I think that’s why I’ve been called that, not because I wear spangly dresses, although if it did all go wrong, maybe I’ll start doing Shirley Bassey impressions.”

It’s a relief, then, that the image of McMillan crooning Big Spender while wrapped in a scarlet feather boa is never likely to become reality as, judging by his regular TV appearances, his own national radio show and numerous posts as poet in residence, his career is the strongest it’s been since he became a freelance writer in 1981.

Next on his busy calendar is a visit to Liverpool for Radio 3’s Free Thinking festival, when he will be performing his show The Verb as well as chairing the Speed Dating with a Thinker, in which members of the public are invited to present their ideas to a panel of “thinkers”.

McMillan will be “the man with the bell”, sounding it when the contributor’s three minutes are up. He is amused that, at an event about thought, he will not have to think at all.

“There’s even someone who tells me when to ring the bell,” he exclaims. “But I think these events are great. Today, more than ever, as the world collapses around us, we need free thinkers.

“What excites me about events like this is that people turn up in their droves – they get very excited about it. I think that’s partly because it’s in Liverpool and people like to talk and like to argue and debate. It’s getting very trendy – ideas festivals are now happening all over the place.”

This is the third time Radio 3 has held the three-day annual event in Liverpool, with conversation, film, performance, drama and debate about the ideas that are changing the world.

McMillan, 51, believes poetry plays a central part in understanding modern life.

“Poetry is the place where language refreshes itself. These days, when economists and bankers have let us down, we have to turn to poets,” says the Barnsley-based writer and broadcaster.

“People use poetry as a response to big world events and to great personal events too.

“At those moments people feel the need to express themselves in heightened language.

“I think poetry is vital to us today but then I would say that wouldn’t I. If I was a butcher, I’d be telling you that was vital instead.”

As far as I know, McMillan has never been a butcher, but he did work in a tennis ball factory and on a building site before making the decision to become a professional poet.

He admits that he has been lucky in enjoying such a successful career, but that is largely, he adds, because his outgoing personality suits his work.

“Some poets don’t want to be out in public, they’d rather sit alone and work on their poetry quietly, which is fine, but if you want to make a living from it you have to get out there,” says McMillan, who writes in carefully chosen notebooks which absolutely must not contain lines.

”The nice thing is that poetry is in such a good place at the moment and I think that’s in a large part because poets from Liverpool, like Roger McGough, carved the way for it.”

McGough’s encouragement for writers inspired McMillan’s desire to work on community projects.

He is the official poet for government body UK Trade & Investment as well as Humberside’s Police Beat Poet, and, for the past decade, he has been poet in residence at Barnsley FC.

Although Tottenham Hotspur and Brighton & Hove Albion have similar positions, and Liverpool FC had a poet in residence for a while a few years ago, this job still raises an intrigued eyebrow among football fans.

“It started when Barnsley werein the Premiership and it was really an honorary position, but I have become more involved over the years,” he says.

“I am very keen on the link between the arts and sport and it is a historical one. In the Olympics, they used to give awards for writing poetry and it’s a shame that doesn’t happen anymore.

“A lot of people come up to me with what they have written and ask for advice.

“For me, that’s just part of the job.”

A PROGRAMME of events for Radio 3’s Free Thinking festival is available online at www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/freethinking/2008

lauradavis@dailypost.co.uk