Product Description

Roger McGough is one of Britain's best loved poets and this collection 'charts [his] passage from youthful exuberance to the wry reflection of his later years. What remains the same throughout the 40 years is the poet's winning wit, accessibility and abiding readability' Independent ---------------------------------- 'Time has confirmed ... that McGoughÂ’s talent was much more substantial than many of his long-forgotten detractors suspected. If he was a pop poet it was not in any ephemeral sense. A shy extrovert ... he has given voice to poetry and found a voice of his own which is humourful, introspective, irreverent, easy on the ear, conversational. It is also memorable and enduring and fresh. Age has not withered [his lines] nor diminished their potency. Of how much modern poetry can you say that?' Sunday Herald

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #25116 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

About the Author
'The patron saint of poetry' (according to Carol Ann Duffy), Roger McGough was born in Liverpool, the son of a docker, and attended Hull University. In the '60s he had a brief flirtation with the pop world as a member of the Scaffold. He has been one of Britain's most popular poets for over 40 years, and has written many books for children and adults. His Selected Poems, entitled Blazing Fruit, is a bestselling poetry title on the Penguin backlist. He lives in Barnes, south-west London, with his wife and two youngest children.

Customer Reviews

Poetry for the People
Roger McGough stepped onto the scene with Brian Patten and Adrian Henri with their Mersey Sound anthology in 1967. Liverpool had become a creative whirlpool of music thanks to the Beatles, and poetry was suddenly pulled from the echelons of academia and inserted back into the street by this trio of poets. At least, that's how I see McGough's work, as poetry for the people.

This volume contains poems from his collections beginning with The Mersey Sound and ending with the 2002 collection Everyday Eclipses. There are also 6 previously unpublished poems.

Nothing is too small or simple for McGough's poetry to touch, and no more is this dedication to the ordinary and everyday more clear than in the eponymous poem Everyday Eclipses:

The hamburger flipped across the face of the bun
The Frisbee winning the race against its own shadow

McGough is not just a poet, but a trickster, a gambler, a joker, a juggler, a punner: there is no escape for the English language as words and phrases tumble and swing like acts in a circus. The results are often laugh out loud funny, like clowns for the sake of sheer fun; others will leave you fearful and gasping like the feats of the acrobats; and others still, like giants and bearded ladies, are just plain odd, ridiculous even.

If poetry is popular speech; the drunken words thrown around in pubs; you and I walking down the street: then Roger McGough is its voice, and this anthology its greatest collection.

Love Cycle (from Everyday Eclipses)

Up against the wall
Locked in passionate embrace
our two bicycles