Social media helping new poets bypass 'establishment gatekeepers'

Poet Ian McMillan says social media is helping the next generation of poets to breakthrough the "gatekeepers" of the "poetry establishment".

The 70-year-old will be appearing at Ilkley Literature Festival, alongside authors such as Jacqueline Wilson and Kate Atkinson, swimmer Mark Foster and tennis coach Judy Murray.

McMillan, who publishes a Haiku on BlueSky every day, says he finds social media platforms to be "liberating" for those who want to publish new work.

"I think Instagram poetry is fantastic. It's really liberated people who might have felt a bit nervous about the poetry establishment," he says.

"Social media is great for making people feel confident. And to put something on Instagram, a poem or an image, is to actually publish it, isn't it?

"You don't know who's going to see it. And it is, in a sense, easier than trying to negotiate the gatekeepers who can sometimes be a barrier to get new things published."

McMillan's latest book of poems, Red River Valley, is about family life, everyday surrealism, and the effect of austerity on the village near Barnsley where he's lived all his life.

Born in Darfield in 1956, the writer says his hometown continues to be "endlessly inspiring".

"Every morning I get up at the crack of dawn and I go for my early morning stroll around the village that I've done for years and years.

"I try and test myself out when I get back by writing down five things that I've seen on the same walk every day that I've been walking since I was a child," he says.

"Somebody said to me once, do you maintain a base in Barnsley? I said, yeah, I call it my house, to be honest with you.

"They assume that you live in Surrey. And, every now and then, you come up to your pied-à-terre in Barnsley."

McMillan believes staying in South Yorkshire has given him a "long view" of the town, which has bounced back from the years of austerity in the 2010s.

"Barnsley has reinvented itself and people who have been away from Barnsley come back and see what's happening, particularly in the centre of town, but also in the villages.

"There's such a lot of regeneration, there's such a lot of excitement. Taxi drivers will say things like, 'do you know, they're coming down from that Leeds for a night out in Barnsley'.

"There's lots of excitement and regeneration at the moment and that's got to be a good thing because austerity was a terrible thing, and Barnsley seems to have survived it and is thriving."

For McMillan, Ilkley Literature Festival is a trip down memory lane, after performing there in the 1980s.

"When I was a young man first starting out, I did a thing at the Ilkley Literature Festival Fringe.

"I thought it was going to be like the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and it turned out it was me and three other blokes in an upstairs room in a pub and nobody came, but who cared? We were at the Ilkley Festival.

"I saw all kinds of writers there over the years and what's nice about it is, as we know, it's not in London, so people can get to it very easily."

Another of the bonuses of appearing at Ilkley he says, is a trip to Bettys.

"I might treat myself to a fat rascal in Bettys, but you've got to eat the fat rascal quite a long time before the show, because it will clog up your clack, as Ian McKellen would say."

Ilkley Literature Festival runs until 18 October.

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