Hello I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island

discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in

the radio broadcast. For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My castaway this week is the stand-up poet Ian McMillan.

Thirty years ago he was working in a factory gluing together tennis ball halves.

Then he got a grant chucked in his job and devoted himself

to poetry and performance. It's a matter of personal pride that he's not had a proper job since.

These days he's known as the Bard of Barnsley and his appeal

stretches from the terraces of his local football club to the balcony of the

London Coliseum. He's a poet in residence at both Barnsley FC and the English National Opera.

He still lives in Darfield, the village outside Barnsley where he was born,

and he considers and analyzes British culture from this very particular vantage point in South Yorkshire.

I was born into a place that seemed settled, he says, but it's changed now.

The pits have all gone, the old certainties have become uncertain.

The landscape has become greened over. Although I still walk down to the same paper shop for my paper.

That's important to you, is it that sort of sense of

continuity of noticing the tiny things in life. It is really occasionally I think

perhaps I should have lived somewhere else but I love the idea

that I've lived in the same place all my life people know me people couldn't care less you know

when I've been on the television I'll be stood in the paper shop and there'll be a bit of a silence then somebody will say we saw you we saw you yapping

I'll tell you what a fantastic phrase and it's just nice to stay in a place that it's changing gradually and you can do the

universal in the local I always think so just occasionally when I'm walking down

...