Talking Myself Home: My Life in Verses

Talking Myself Home" is a portrait of an unregarded place. And a love story between Lt Cdr J. McMillan, a Scottish sailor and Olive Wood, a young lass in Yorkshire. The unregarded place is Darfield, near Barnsley, a place mentioned (briefly) in the Domesday book and now trying to reinvent itself after the wholesale closure of the mining industry. The life story is that of John and Olives son, the Bard of Barnsley, from Low Valley Junior School and Wath Grammar School to Oscar the Frog (Barnsleys first folk-rock band) and Jaws (Barnsleys First folk-poetry duo) and beyond. A life lived with words at its core. In some ways its a tiny life; a few ripples in a pond far from the centre of things, a few lines written in celebration and commemoration of places and times that deserve better. In another way its a shout of hope, that we can find the centre anywhere and celebrate it.

Ian McMillan was born in Yorkshire in 1956. He first started out on the live poetry circuit in the 1970s and went on to become one of Britain's best loved poets. He has the unique honour of being the first poet-in-residence to a football club, his hometown Barnsley FC