Andrew McMillan's playtime poetry collection is reviewed by The Guardian

playtime is follow up to Andrew McMillan's celebrated debut, physical.

playtime is follow up to Andrew McMillan's celebrated debut, physical. Sarah Crown describes it as "a tautly controlled exploration of nostalgia and loss of innocence".

Read the full article here.

playtime was published in August 2018. 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.

Andrew McMillan joined the Manchester Writing School team in September 2017. He 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. It was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2015. Most recently physical has been translated into Norwegian.