PARTINGS: Andrew McMillan in conversation

Join us at Manchester Central library to celebrate the publication of Partings; Andrew McMillan’s achingly beautiful new collection about a break-up and its losses, sorrows and eventual solace. Andrew will be reading from the book and discussing how the collection was shaped, followed by a book signing.

Doors: 5.30pm, Starts: 6pm

General admission is £5 or included within the price of a Book & Ticket.

About the collection:

The poems in Andrew McMillan’s deeply moving fourth collection present a series of separations. Lovers, long-term and fleeting, part ways; the self, as we know it, becomes estranged from itself; the poetic line fractures – splits apart – in order to let in breath, take stock: so raw memories may close, and slowly heal.

With stark honesty, and no hint of self-righteousness, these poems weigh up complicity and blame, attending closely to the love and anger buried beneath the surface of every life, every relationship – excavating it with the poet’s precision and clarity of thought.

With his usual close attention, McMillan examines emotional history and its rupture – ‘when what used to feel so heavy is just dust on the shelf and in the hand’ – and what possibilities might begin to emerge in the aftermath. This book examines individual memories, objects, messages and moments, using them to work towards an ultimate reckoning: what is it that might remain after everything we held certain has gone?

About the author:

Andrew McMillan is the author of three poetry collections, a novel and the co-editor of the anthology 100 Queer Poems.

His work has been widely translated across Europe, and has won the Guardian First Book Award, the only poetry collection to ever do so, as well as a Somerset Maugham Award, an Eric Gregory Award, the Polari Prize and a Northern Writers’ Award, amongst others. He has been shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, The Forward Prizes and the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year.

He is Professor of Contemporary Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was appointed an MBE for Services to Literature in 2026.