Roger McGough at Waterside

One of the famous Liverpool Poets of the Sixties, Roger McGough – ‘the patron saint of poetry’ according to former Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy – takes to the stage with his latest show, Alive & Gigging, featuring new poems as well as old favourites.

Alongside Adrian Henri and Brian Patten, Roger McGough helped influence popular culture (and apparently “helped kickstart the musical careers of Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix”) with The Mersey Sound – published in 1967, it is one of the bestselling poetry anthologies of all time, selling over a million copies. In 1968,  with John Gorman and Mike McGear as The Scaffold, he performed a combination of comic songs, poetry and sketches, and they reached Number One in the UK Singles Chart with Lily The Pink.

McGough has published over 100 poetry books for adults and children, most recently Over to You, Crocodile Tears, Money Go Round and Safety In Numbers, which was written during the pandemic and came out in November 2021 with Penguin. A playwright and presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programme Poetry Please, he has won numerous awards and was awarded a CBE in 2004. He is a Fellow of The Royal Society and President of The Poetry Society, who call him: ‘A witty and ingenious chronicler of British life with a deftness and agility that is hard to beat.’

Now a hale and hearty 86 years old and ‘at that awkward age now between birth and death’, there will be poems about growing old – ‘A Joy to be Old’, ‘A Cure for Ageing’ and ‘Let me Die an Old Man’s Death’ – but also plenty of laughs. The show takes audiences on a journey back to key moments of Roger’s life, as he reflects on his Liverpool childhood before World War II, with memories and poems including ‘The Overall Winner’ and ‘Learning to Read’ and a throwback to the Sixties and poems of the Mersey Beat – new verses have even been added for Lily the Pink…

Roger McGough’s performance will be followed by the chance to ask questions and there will be also be a book signing.