A new exhibition at Manchester's Portico Library showcases a colourful collaboration between an artist photographer and a poet based on opposite sides of the Pennines.
Poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan and photographer Andrew Brooks took up a year-long creative correspondence, inspired by the daily whimsical tweets made by Ian on his early morning strolls.
The pair discovered a shared fascination with what’s on their doorsteps, respectively using words and pictures to tell shared stories about their pre-dawn neighbourhoods.
The result, an exhibition called The Songs The Morning Sang, is a series of 25 pieces, each an interaction between Andrew's image and Ian's lyrical response. It is supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and free to attend, it is part of the Manchester City of Literature Festival of Libraries.
An old phone box, a deflated red whoopee cushion and a circular security light against a brick wall become something else entirely as Ian's words shift the meanings of Andrew’s pictures, telling magical stories about everyday objects and scenes. The phone box receives a call from a mystery singer, the red rubber toy is a fallen planet, and the light, a moon against a brick sky.
Their process was one of collaboration at a distance, Andrew working from New Mills and Ian, known as the bard of Barnsley, from his South Yorkshire hometown.
Moved by the popular and poetic early morning tweets made by Ian on his daily stroll, which he began during the first Covid lockdown, Andrew set out to make his own series of pre-dawn walks. Leaving his home at 5am each day with his camera, the photographer took hundreds of pictures within two miles of his front door.
After each walk, Andrew then shared his pictures with Ian, who responded to the images of his choice, building narrative into each with an unexpected micro story.
On Saturday 14 June 2025, Ian and Andrew are inviting people to join them for the first World Early Stroll Day and kickstart their morning by documenting a mindful local walk. Creative responses in words, pictures, sound recordings, drawings and any other artform can be shared across X, Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook with the hashtag #WorldEarlyStrollDay.
A second string to the collaboration saw Andrew and Ian explore The Portico's extensive collections of mostly 19th century books to create found poetry and collages. With over 25,000 to choose from, they focused on tomes relating to walking and light. With Ian selecting the words, Andrew handpicked images from unrelated books that when put together, created new meanings and purpose for books that perhaps had remained unopened for decades.
Andrew said: "Reading Ian’s early stroll tweets has become part of my morning routine and is an inspiring start to the day. Knowing someone’s already been out there responding to the world and creating shows to us that a day is full of possibilities and new ideas.
"This call and response project is based on the morning walk around each of our local streets. The glimpsed details in Ian’s writing share a sense of strangeness in the everyday and feel like snapshots of the world.
"I use these written snapshots as inspiration for how I photograph the streets near where I live in New Mills. Then it’s fascinating to see how Ian responds in his writing, what he pulls out of these photographs, building on the half-seen ideas and images I couldn’t quite put into words."
Ian said: "Every morning I get up at 5am and go for my early stroll, always taking the same route around Darfield, the village near Barnsley where I’ve always lived.
"For me, as for many people, this is the best time of the day. Nothing much has happened yet and it feels like almost anything might happen.
"Then I tweet about what I’ve seen; five sentences, five observations, five new ways of seeing and thinking. Always the same stroll, always new ways to describe it. The tweets are like tiny poems or stories or essays on life in the 21st century in an unremarkable part of the world.
"So, when Andrew and I started thinking about a collaboration in 2023, 'early strolls' seemed like an obvious and shining choice. Andrew would go on his own strolls, and I would make tiny poems from his images; it meant that I would have to think harder because I was outside the A to Z that I’ve known since childhood. My 'early stroll' language had to find a way into somewhere new at sunrise."
The Songs The Morning Sang is at The Portico Library, 57 Mosley Street, Manchester M2 3HY from 6 June-27 September 2025. The library is closed on Sundays