Ian McMillan is contemplating the greats who have gone before him. He is one of five poets tasked with translating Beowulf for a community music-theatre production in Huddersfield this week. It doesn’t pay to fret about those who have put words to this Anglo-Saxon epic over the past millennium.
“All the people that have tried it before are standing behind you in a big row,” says McMillan, the Barnsley-born presenter of BBC Radio 3’s The Verb. “Seamus Heaney has done it – and Simon Armitage. They’re all stood there with their arms folded, shaking their heads and tutting. But also behind them are all the people who made it up on the spot. When you’re typing it at your laptop, you feel you’re surrounded by all these different Beowulfs. You try and put your own spin on it, but you’re aware you’re just a mouthpiece for some vast historical thing you’ve got no control over.”
