Guardian first book award 2015 goes to poet Andrew McMillan | Books | The Guardian

Born in 1988, McMillan is the son of another poet, Ian McMillan, presenter of the long-running Radio 3 programme The Verb. Though he has kept quiet about the connection, Andrew dedicated the collection to his parents. He grew up in a small village outside Barnsley in south Yorkshire, studying English at Lancaster and University College London before becoming a lecturer in creative writing at Liverpool John Moores University. As well as magazine publication, his poems began appearing in pamphlets in 2009, with Red Squirrel Press publishing an early version in 2013 of the long poem Protest of the Physical, which is the centrepiece of the prizewinning collection.