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pandemonium
*A 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK IN THE GUARDIAN, FINANCIAL TIMES AND IRISH TIMES CULTURE* After two prize-winning collections which examined the intimacies and intricacies of the physical body, McMillan's third book marks a both inward, into the difficult world of mental health, and outwards into the natural and political world. Keeping his trademark breath-space and lower-case lines, but more formally experimental, incorporating sequences and sonnets, the poems in pandemonium explore the fragility and depth of the human mind - in its panic and its troubled retreat - and map this turmoil onto the chaos and abundance of the garden. Depression is mirrored in the invasive, seemingly untreatable knotweed that slowly suffocates the garden, while the sky conspires in its sudden, terrifying clarity, 'as though the root of the world were ripped clean off'. McMillan has been celebrated for his unflinchingly frank depictions of the body and sexual love, but these new poems are raw dispatches from a mind in freefall, a body in trouble. Addressing a period of acute depression, they are less about physical union and completeness and more about fracture and tender, savagely moving poems which stare, unblinkingly, into the sudden havoc and hurt of this world, searching for - and finally finding - some redemption.
96 pages, Paperback
Published May 20, 2021
About the author
Andrew McMillan
35 books109 followersAndrew McMillan was born in 1988. He now lectures in Creative Writing at Liverpool John Moores University. He studied English Literature w/ Creative Writing at Lancaster University, and then an MA in modernism from University College London.
His first full-length collection, ‘physical’, will be published by Jonathan Cape in July 2015. This follows three highly successful pamphlets, the first of which, every salt advance, was published in 2009 by Red Squirrel Press. A second pamphlet, ’ the moon is a supporting player’, was published by Red Squirrel Press in October 2011 and a selection of his poet can be found in the seminal new anthology The Salt Book of Younger Poets as well as in Best British Poetry 2013. A new pamphlet length poem, ‘protest of the physical’, was published by Red Squirrel Press in late 2013.
As well as his permanent position at Liverpool John Moores University, Andrew has taught poetry for Sheffield University, Edge Hill University and the Poetry School.
Andrew is currently one of the writers working for national charity First Story, and has been Poet-in-Residence for Off the Page , the LGBT community of Bournemouth, Sea View Day Centre in Poole, Basingstoke Bourough Council and the Regional Youth Theatre Festival; writer-in-residence for the Watershed Landscape Project, Growing Places arts and sustainability project in Newcastle and Apprentice Poet-in-Residence for the Ilkley Literature Festival In 2010 he was commissioned by IMove, the cultural olympiad body for Yorkshire, to produce a new sequence of work which was featured on Radio 4’s Today Programme. He regularly runs workshops for amateur poetry groups and in various community,school and higher education settings as well as for Sheffield Theatres and various literary feativals. 2012 saw him named a ‘new voice’ by both Latitude Festival and Aldeburgh Poetry Festival.
He was founding editor of Cake Magazine alongside Martha Sprackland: http://www.cake-poetry.co.uk/
In 2014 Andrew won a substantial Northern Writers Award from New Writing North.
His first full-length collection, ‘physical’, will be published by Jonathan Cape in July 2015. This follows three highly successful pamphlets, the first of which, every salt advance, was published in 2009 by Red Squirrel Press. A second pamphlet, ’ the moon is a supporting player’, was published by Red Squirrel Press in October 2011 and a selection of his poet can be found in the seminal new anthology The Salt Book of Younger Poets as well as in Best British Poetry 2013. A new pamphlet length poem, ‘protest of the physical’, was published by Red Squirrel Press in late 2013.
As well as his permanent position at Liverpool John Moores University, Andrew has taught poetry for Sheffield University, Edge Hill University and the Poetry School.
Andrew is currently one of the writers working for national charity First Story, and has been Poet-in-Residence for Off the Page , the LGBT community of Bournemouth, Sea View Day Centre in Poole, Basingstoke Bourough Council and the Regional Youth Theatre Festival; writer-in-residence for the Watershed Landscape Project, Growing Places arts and sustainability project in Newcastle and Apprentice Poet-in-Residence for the Ilkley Literature Festival In 2010 he was commissioned by IMove, the cultural olympiad body for Yorkshire, to produce a new sequence of work which was featured on Radio 4’s Today Programme. He regularly runs workshops for amateur poetry groups and in various community,school and higher education settings as well as for Sheffield Theatres and various literary feativals. 2012 saw him named a ‘new voice’ by both Latitude Festival and Aldeburgh Poetry Festival.
He was founding editor of Cake Magazine alongside Martha Sprackland: http://www.cake-poetry.co.uk/
In 2014 Andrew won a substantial Northern Writers Award from New Writing North.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
March 27, 2022
In my second collection from this poet and his third to be published, McMillan unpacks the complicated and fraught feelings of living with someone caught in the cruel grip of depression. He artfully transmutes his partner's self-destruction and his own painful reactions to that into something somehow poignant. That he is able to squeeze anything so closely resembling beauty out of an experience so harrowing is utterly remarkable.
I really appreciate McMillan's simple and understated style. As a reader with a penchant for more flowery language, he still manages to fill his lines with clever, interesting and evocative wordplay while always maintaining a minimalist aesthetic and feel. This creates an accessible and breezy reading experience without losing the emotional heft and artistic skill that elevate these simple observations and musings to the lofty mantle of poetry.
As someone who has dealt with depression firsthand, the portrayal of his partner's mental health as it deteriorates and rebounds periodically is heart-wrenching but all too real. It never feels exploitative or hyperbolic but is clearly authentic and viscerally felt. I empathised deeply with both Andrew and Ben. The only thing more excruciating than experiencing depression and suicidal thoughts yourself has got to be living with and loving someone who does.
Some of these poems were lyrical gut-punches that knocked me out instantly and some may have to linger with me for a while longer to really sink in. They didn't consistently work for me in that way but when they hit, they hit hard. I prefer McMillan's debut, Physical, to this one but it is certainly a moving and marvelous work in its own right. I will continue to read anything from this gifted young, queer poet that I can get my hands on.
I really appreciate McMillan's simple and understated style. As a reader with a penchant for more flowery language, he still manages to fill his lines with clever, interesting and evocative wordplay while always maintaining a minimalist aesthetic and feel. This creates an accessible and breezy reading experience without losing the emotional heft and artistic skill that elevate these simple observations and musings to the lofty mantle of poetry.
As someone who has dealt with depression firsthand, the portrayal of his partner's mental health as it deteriorates and rebounds periodically is heart-wrenching but all too real. It never feels exploitative or hyperbolic but is clearly authentic and viscerally felt. I empathised deeply with both Andrew and Ben. The only thing more excruciating than experiencing depression and suicidal thoughts yourself has got to be living with and loving someone who does.
Some of these poems were lyrical gut-punches that knocked me out instantly and some may have to linger with me for a while longer to really sink in. They didn't consistently work for me in that way but when they hit, they hit hard. I prefer McMillan's debut, Physical, to this one but it is certainly a moving and marvelous work in its own right. I will continue to read anything from this gifted young, queer poet that I can get my hands on.
June 7, 2022
It's a joy to read poetry that is simultaneously so sensitive and so tough.
May 25, 2024
I loved 'physical' and 'playtime', but found this heavy handed and heavy going.
October 22, 2021
Really hard subject matter throughout this, but really movingly and bravely dealt with. Lots of it tackles aspects being a carer as well as dealing with personal grief and mental health and I just really appreciated that aspect.
July 2, 2024
RTC - I'm at the beach - onward into my next book.
Depressing topics, but backed by concerned love.
Depressing topics, but backed by concerned love.
June 22, 2021
Pandemonium does seem a peculiar title for this volume. The word is lifted from the first poem in the volume:
panic loosed bedlam
pandemonium
It sits rather oddly, panic (a disordered state induced by Pan), bedlam (mental asylum adapted from Bethlehem), then pandemonium. The root of the word, however, suggests the train of thought. Pandemonium is Milton's wonderful invention, a place filled with demons, a city created around a fallen angel whose mind is fully disturbed; and mental illness was often thought as the result of demons.
Pandemonium moves beyond Playtime into much more serious territory. Its main sequences are a study of how mental breakdown impacts on a relationship. In "Swan," the mythology of Swan Lake provides a fine dance of metaphors and a study of gay struggle. Uncivil relates the psyche of the individual with that of the community. George is a deeply felt elegy and study of grief, how a family can be ripped apart. And Knotweed is a penetrating description of how chaos can occur suddenly -- as with knotweed -- and how signs of mental illness can be unrecognised. In this series, McMillan takes the rationalist's garden, an image echoing from Shakespeare, through Marvell, into Pope, and creates a homely, down-to-earth disordered view of nature and mind. As Iago remarked, our minds are gardens and are will are gardeners. But not all of us are Monty Dons of the human psyche, especially when we are embroiled in the garden's welter.
McMillan acknowledges that Sexton and Confessionalism stand behind some of the poems. The real achievement is in how he refuses the excesses of this genre, one that shrieks too obviously in much trashy instagram style poetry, and manages to make the simple, telling phrase resonate. This volume isn't a pandemonium of cosmic wails -- it is a volume of measured restraint that handles a personal relationship with tact and honesty.
panic loosed bedlam
pandemonium
It sits rather oddly, panic (a disordered state induced by Pan), bedlam (mental asylum adapted from Bethlehem), then pandemonium. The root of the word, however, suggests the train of thought. Pandemonium is Milton's wonderful invention, a place filled with demons, a city created around a fallen angel whose mind is fully disturbed; and mental illness was often thought as the result of demons.
Pandemonium moves beyond Playtime into much more serious territory. Its main sequences are a study of how mental breakdown impacts on a relationship. In "Swan," the mythology of Swan Lake provides a fine dance of metaphors and a study of gay struggle. Uncivil relates the psyche of the individual with that of the community. George is a deeply felt elegy and study of grief, how a family can be ripped apart. And Knotweed is a penetrating description of how chaos can occur suddenly -- as with knotweed -- and how signs of mental illness can be unrecognised. In this series, McMillan takes the rationalist's garden, an image echoing from Shakespeare, through Marvell, into Pope, and creates a homely, down-to-earth disordered view of nature and mind. As Iago remarked, our minds are gardens and are will are gardeners. But not all of us are Monty Dons of the human psyche, especially when we are embroiled in the garden's welter.
McMillan acknowledges that Sexton and Confessionalism stand behind some of the poems. The real achievement is in how he refuses the excesses of this genre, one that shrieks too obviously in much trashy instagram style poetry, and manages to make the simple, telling phrase resonate. This volume isn't a pandemonium of cosmic wails -- it is a volume of measured restraint that handles a personal relationship with tact and honesty.
May 23, 2021
Els poemes d'Andrew McMillan mai han sigut especialment alegres, però en aquest poemari s'endinsa encara més en una mena de foscor, la foscor de la ment de l'estimat que pateix i que no vol sobreviure. I aconsegueix fer-ho amb una força i una llum admirables. És un poeta fantàstic, que domina com pocs els ritmes. Sempre és un plaer llegir-lo.
November 10, 2022
one thing that the pills mean is that you rarely cum
your body pushes you to the edge
but has learnt to step back rather than jump
Felt quite Gothic: nature, death, overwhelming emotion. Fav part is the thematic exploration of being gay and having a depressed partner bc my body too has learnt to step back rather than jump.
your body pushes you to the edge
but has learnt to step back rather than jump
Felt quite Gothic: nature, death, overwhelming emotion. Fav part is the thematic exploration of being gay and having a depressed partner bc my body too has learnt to step back rather than jump.
August 6, 2022
'the lake is calm tonight
the moon has dropped white feathers on the water
tonight the lake is calm
the wavelets lap like rustling wings
the lake tonight is calm
but look who is coming in to land
to tear the peace asunder'
(from 'Swan', p29)
the moon has dropped white feathers on the water
tonight the lake is calm
the wavelets lap like rustling wings
the lake tonight is calm
but look who is coming in to land
to tear the peace asunder'
(from 'Swan', p29)
May 28, 2021
It’s not everyday you pick up a book of poetry that takes on a rollercoaster of emotions. From joy to pain to sadness to love. The writing in his 3rd anthology is stunning and just when you think he can’t out do his previous book, Andrew truly does. For many years I’ve been inspired by his writing and share it with many people, and he continues to inspire me with this new anthology. A beautiful book that anyone should buy!
Read
June 3, 2023needs a suicide/suicide attempt trigger warning in the beginning. completely threw me off. there's good stuff in there, but i found that i couldn't focus on any of it
November 29, 2024
You all know I’m trying to be a poetry girlie, and I think I’ve found a poet who truly resonates with me—Andrew McMillan! Over the past year, I’ve been exploring different voices, and his collection Pandemonium hit hard. It’s raw, thought-provoking, and full of hurt. Mental health and sickness really came through, and wow, I felt it.
I’m still not at the point where I can explain everything happening in the poems, especially the structure (reading aloud helps, but not quite enough). Honestly, I think I need someone to read poetry to me.
That said, I’m definitely grabbing more of McMillan’s work! Any recs for where to go next?
I’m still not at the point where I can explain everything happening in the poems, especially the structure (reading aloud helps, but not quite enough). Honestly, I think I need someone to read poetry to me.
That said, I’m definitely grabbing more of McMillan’s work! Any recs for where to go next?
July 23, 2021
no one is sure how we should look after
this sadness uninvited unwelcome
this sadness uninvited unwelcome
December 5, 2021
In this collection Andrew McMillan turns his established poetic credentials for dealing with uncomfortable subjects to new dark areas of human existence, and triumphs again. I forget sometimes how young he still is really.
Plenty of poets, of course, have addressed themselves to the experience of mental illness or anguish, but he sheds frank, gentle, harsh, light on the experience of loving someone in the throes of their emotional unwellness.
I remember so well from Twitter his father's eager anticipation of the arrival of a new grandchild and the heartbreaking news of his stillbirth. The uncle's poems here are a wonderful tribute to George and to the family's sense of loss.
And then there is the section where he grapples with a garden as a novice gardener, the gruntwork and it is all of a piece with the other poems.
I fervently wish him a happier future, his status as an exceptionally fine poet is surely already secure.
Plenty of poets, of course, have addressed themselves to the experience of mental illness or anguish, but he sheds frank, gentle, harsh, light on the experience of loving someone in the throes of their emotional unwellness.
I remember so well from Twitter his father's eager anticipation of the arrival of a new grandchild and the heartbreaking news of his stillbirth. The uncle's poems here are a wonderful tribute to George and to the family's sense of loss.
And then there is the section where he grapples with a garden as a novice gardener, the gruntwork and it is all of a piece with the other poems.
I fervently wish him a happier future, his status as an exceptionally fine poet is surely already secure.
September 15, 2021
Major, major content warning for su*c*de/su*c*dal imagery. Also still birth.
But that was incredible.
But that was incredible.
February 18, 2022
emotive, harrowing, hopeful
August 24, 2023
Andrew McMillan, has a raw and gritty way of expressing through his poems.
A darker maturer content than his “Physical” collection - nevertheless “Pandemonium” was yet another great work
A darker maturer content than his “Physical” collection - nevertheless “Pandemonium” was yet another great work
December 3, 2023
'tore into each other / like presents opened each other up / and what was this anger we'd been given / where did it come from this rage this point / where other men would fight [...]
ill again wanking at ten past three / in the morning / sitting on the closed / lid of the toilet seat watching something / on my phone pretending to believe / the emotions of the men on the screen / to force myself to heat to bring myself / to empty in my hand / the sweet phlegm of my own longing / so groping back down the landing / as though after a piss I can lay down / this dumb body all its lust poured out / tamed of its natural reflex'
[training]
'hooking the thumbs through a piece of fabric / like the eye of a needle I let him / wrap my hands so tenderly / as though dressing a wound [...] and when my hands are bound tight / in the cotton and the gloves put on there is the footwork / come up on that heel bend that knee as though / he is teaching me to walk [...] a voice outside that shouts remember / the legs before the back before the arms / push up from the ground thrust lock it out / because most of this is training / in not letting things come in [...] and at times like that flat out and sprawling / I know that this could be perhaps my greatest / folly to think if I made myself stronger / I could save anybody.'
'we thought we knew dishonesty / but then this decade burning / itself down to the wick / the wind turning branch against branch / forcing open the mouths of the bins'
//
I think I preferred Physical but I am once again thankful for discovering (another) andrew's work
ill again wanking at ten past three / in the morning / sitting on the closed / lid of the toilet seat watching something / on my phone pretending to believe / the emotions of the men on the screen / to force myself to heat to bring myself / to empty in my hand / the sweet phlegm of my own longing / so groping back down the landing / as though after a piss I can lay down / this dumb body all its lust poured out / tamed of its natural reflex'
[training]
'hooking the thumbs through a piece of fabric / like the eye of a needle I let him / wrap my hands so tenderly / as though dressing a wound [...] and when my hands are bound tight / in the cotton and the gloves put on there is the footwork / come up on that heel bend that knee as though / he is teaching me to walk [...] a voice outside that shouts remember / the legs before the back before the arms / push up from the ground thrust lock it out / because most of this is training / in not letting things come in [...] and at times like that flat out and sprawling / I know that this could be perhaps my greatest / folly to think if I made myself stronger / I could save anybody.'
'we thought we knew dishonesty / but then this decade burning / itself down to the wick / the wind turning branch against branch / forcing open the mouths of the bins'
//
I think I preferred Physical but I am once again thankful for discovering (another) andrew's work
January 20, 2025
“the dwellings built beneath the dam / must be evacuated”, writes Andrew McMillan in his third + most accomplished poetry collection yet, pandemonium. If playtime was a spiritual and thematic successor to physical, wherein McMillan was working on perfecting his style, then pandemonium takes that stylistic work to new, less familiar + trodden themes — a stark move from the bodily, physical and playful, to the mind and spirit, to an emotional state so suffocated, reaching out to the natural world for clarity, order, comfort. McMillan writes of mental illness with great acuity, but never fails to find a new visual lexicon for it: he writes of “a bucket under the bathroom light / to catch the dripping rain”, and of medication, with “each morning’s handful / a way of distracting the body from its decline”. He also writes in such a tender, vulnerable way about love, its difficulties as well as its triumphs: “and I think we mistook it for love / this closed hand of a pill-box”, on the one hand, and on the other: “when I look at you / and see the man I met when we were young / and you were well”. In ‘swan’, inspired by and written after Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake, “a queer” appeals to his mother to remember him as a “newly-hatched cygnet”; “I plucked each feather from myself”. From his heartbreaking ‘George’ sequence to the ‘knotwood’ sonnets, McMillan is dazzling here, reaching out desperately in free-fall, and catching his reader’s hands on the way.
May 27, 2023
What feels like a more slender book than Physical and Playtime, but also a more thoughtful one. With braided sequences and a firm eye, my favourite must be Swan -- a poem that unfolds its imagery with what appears to be a sedate pace, but always keeping in mind its titular animal and its ability for sudden, painful violence. McMillan's inhabitation of the swan persona keeps the poem focused, muscular and beautiful, until its final section where the speaker divests himself of his feathers, once more an ugly duckling:
"I raised each failed wing just flesh now
nothing for the wind to get up under
the mirror cracked with the tides
I reared up I jumped I watched myself
broken fall towards myself"
The poem's resolution to be nothing but oneself feels hard won. It is hard to eschew metaphor and describe plainly the world as one sees it. How much harder would it be, to see oneself that truly? Andrew McMillan makes it feel easy.
"I raised each failed wing just flesh now
nothing for the wind to get up under
the mirror cracked with the tides
I reared up I jumped I watched myself
broken fall towards myself"
The poem's resolution to be nothing but oneself feels hard won. It is hard to eschew metaphor and describe plainly the world as one sees it. How much harder would it be, to see oneself that truly? Andrew McMillan makes it feel easy.
August 24, 2021
TW: attempted suicide, depression, self-harm
Actual rating: 3.5 ⭐️
Man, this was painful and incredibly beautiful.
Nothing else to say.
Sure, some poems I felt flew way over my head. But this was generally a striking collection of poems that I immensely enjoyed.
Favourite part of a poem:
"here's the thing
here's the thing I'm staying put I'm waiting
for the clouds or else that dam or myself
to break"
Actual rating: 3.5 ⭐️
Man, this was painful and incredibly beautiful.
Nothing else to say.
Sure, some poems I felt flew way over my head. But this was generally a striking collection of poems that I immensely enjoyed.
Favourite part of a poem:
"here's the thing
here's the thing I'm staying put I'm waiting
for the clouds or else that dam or myself
to break"
May 1, 2025
This was my first time reading a collection from this poet. I picked it up randomly at the local library without knowing anything about him.
Several of the poems in this collection, I found extremely moving, including a few that gave me shivers and made me set the book down before I could start reading again. For example, the first poem “for how many years” stopped me dead in my tracks.
That being said, some of the poems in the collection did not grab me. I read over them and felt like I had not read them.
I will definitely check out other collections from this poet.
Several of the poems in this collection, I found extremely moving, including a few that gave me shivers and made me set the book down before I could start reading again. For example, the first poem “for how many years” stopped me dead in my tracks.
That being said, some of the poems in the collection did not grab me. I read over them and felt like I had not read them.
I will definitely check out other collections from this poet.
July 30, 2021
Another fantastic poetry collection from Andrew McMillan. I fell in love with his poetry when reading physical and, although this collection focuses more on the psychological and differs in style, I also really loved pandemonium. I really enjoy the raw, real and unrestricted nature of McMillan's poetry.
November 20, 2023
As a lover of queer poetry I very much wanted to like this one. But I find the narrators narcissism comes through unabashed and underdeveloped. The heart is not there and it left me the reader with a kind of deep sadness that this is where poetry is today and these are supposed to be the queer poets leading the art form. Disappointing.
August 15, 2025
pandemonium simply put is a masterclass in catching a moment and while the poems themselves seem to capture a turbulent storm Andrew seems to be within the eye of its passing and able to give a collected nuanced view of grief, love and growing.
A personal favourite was swan but nothing will break me quite like the first stanza of the first poem, for me it sets up the collection beautifully.
A personal favourite was swan but nothing will break me quite like the first stanza of the first poem, for me it sets up the collection beautifully.
June 12, 2021
This is truly a masterpiece - not a bad poem in the collection and full of perfect imagery. I raced through it and was shaken by it. Really captures depression and the cycle of despair and rebirth. Amazing.
September 12, 2021
Thought the weird spacing would bother me. It didn't -- in fact, I even liked it!
October 9, 2021
3.5*
October 21, 2021
Big fan! Loves a naturey poem and undertones of sadness to go with it!
December 27, 2021
Great as ever
Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews