"Andrew McMillan's second pamphlet is exquisite, playful and subtle. He has expanded his range of voice and subject significantly, yet stripped the language of his poems to the bone. In some poems, his seriousness of tone and address is electrifyingly fresh and lyrical. He takes the weight of language seriously but balances it with play and deft control. The Moon is a Supporting Player convinces me that Andrew McMillan is already a poet of considerable achievement."
David Morley

"Funny, tender, wise beyond his years, Andrew McMillan achieves a rare balance in his poems between the rhythms of colloquial Yorkshire, American Beat travelogue and the music of Romantic verse. With a hint of screenplay, and more than a hint of radio play, The Moon is a Supporting Player is a moving and delightful collection."
Antony Dunn

'BBC Radio 4 Afternoon Play idea #3 - a glockenspiel indicates a train'

Scene 1
a psychiatrist's office
Patient:
problem? I want to tell stories but I never know
how to round things up you know how to give someone
a perfectly circular tale they can spin around their hips
for an afternoon take the other day for example
in a carriage between London and Manchester a man
got into a fight with the conductor the conductor had a face
like a dilapidated barn and he was trying to make the man pay
full fare because he hadn't bought his ticket on the station
the man said he hadn't had chance he'd been rushing his wife
was in hospital cos she'd slipped down the stairs
he had to get back to see her and didn't he understand
and couldn't he let him off just once? the conductor said he was
just following orders and the man replied that that's what they'd said
at Nuremburg and the conductor snatched his money and stormed off
and the man with the wife with a sprained ankle and a broken arm
was left contemplating the thin orange slice of meat that was his ticket
and isn't that a perfect place to end? I suppose it would be but why was there a button missing from the man's coat? and where did the exhausted metaphor of the train sleep that night? and what does the conductor smell like first thing on a morning?

'testament'

I am a broken halfbuzzard of a man
limping through the winter's lilac dusk
I used to make a killing selling proverbs
to the dreamers of provincial towns

something changed no one has the time for feeling
their way through hearing of the shaved
beaten man looking for his tooth in the snow

Andrew McMillan was born in 1988. He studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University and now works as a freelance writer; he is studying part time for an MA in English Literature at University College London. His debut pamphlet, every salt advance, was published in 2009 by Red Squirrel Press.