Andrew McMillan takes us inside the world of the gym and explores the preoccupations which often shape our relationships to our bodies.
Through interviews, and newly commissioned poetry, Andrew McMillan, a poet who - according to the Sunday Times - “scrutinises the violent idealism of masculinity in monologues that are both tender and steely”, interrogates the intersections of poetry and gym culture.
Andrew McMillan was born in South Yorkshire in 1988; his debut collection physical was the first ever poetry collection to win The Guardian First Book Award. The collection also won the Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize, a Somerset Maugham Award (2016), an Eric Gregory Award (2016) and a Northern Writers' award (2014). It was shortlisted the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Costa Poetry Award, The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2016, the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Roehampton Poetry Prize and the Polari First Book Prize. His second collection, playtime, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2018. He is senior lecturer at the Manchester Writing School at MMU and lives in Manchester.