Can you believe that it’s been five years since we were singing happy birthday while washing our hands, baking banana bread and watching Tiger King? Five years since the Covid19 pandemic resulted in multiple national lockdowns. At Barnsley Museums like many other organisations we had to find new ways to stay connected with our audiences.

One of our popular initiatives was appointing Ian McMillan as our Poet In Lockdown to document the weird days we all lived through. It would be an understatement to say that the world has changed a lot in the last few years, for many people they probably aren’t ready to look back on 2020. What hasn’t changed is the power of the written word and the cathartic nature of putting pen to paper, so with that in mind we asked Ian McMillan to write two more sonnets to reflect his thought’s and feelings in 2025

Visit the Barnsley Museums website to read ‘Half a Decade’ and ‘Covid Walls’

If Ian’s poems have inspired you to start writing then please get in touch and we’ll add your poetry to this blog. Get in touch on our socials @BarnsleyMuseums or email barnsleymuseums@barnsley.gov.uk

Here’s Ian with a few writing tips.

Looking Back on 2020

More details and videos from the the #PoetInLockdown campaign:

Ian McMillan’s residency as Poet in Lockdown launched on social media on Friday 10 April 2020 with a new sonnet premiered each evening over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend and a live broadcast with Graham Walker. The commission continued with further new sonnets each Tuesday and Thursday evening. The first 12 of Ian’s Lockdown Sonnets are on the Barnsley Museum YouTube channel:

Watch the full playlist

From late May, Ian continued to write a sonnet a week, released each Thursday. 24 sonnets were commissioned to produce an additional monthly sonnet from September 2020
to February 2021. Ian also chose and read 12 poems sent in by the general public. Around 60 people posted over 170 poems (mostly sonnets) in response to the Poet in Lockdown project. Several people even succeeded in keeping pace with Ian’s sonnet production and many commented that they had never written a sonnet before or hadn’t written poetry since they were at school. The project reached thousands of people and has received comments from Denmark, Germany, Spain, New Zealand and Australia as well as from across the UK.

Watch more Audience Poems

Barnsley’s poet laureate, Eloise Unerman produced a series of ‘Top Tips for New Writers’ and ten poets were commissioned to produce short video workshops to support and encourage entries to the competition. Each of these is aimed at a particular age category and they have been released on social media each Saturday.

See more top tips from Eloise Unerman

The commissions provided additional income to local writers during these difficult times. The workshops they have created are providing a valuable ongoing, online resource to engage and develop amateur writers and the content and tips are still relevant five years later.

The commissioned poets are: Matt Abbott, Rachel Bower, Antony Dunn, Suzanne Evans, Louise
Fazackerley, Toria Garbutt, Ray Hearne, Diane Hinchliffe, Helen Mort and Winston Plowes. Watch more of these short workshops

Submit your poetry

Hopefully this blog has encouraged you to write a poem about how 2025 has made you feel, submit your poetry we can’t wait to hear from you!

Have you read our recent blogs?