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Roger McGough live by Adam Horovitz |
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Roger McGough Live review by Adam Horovitz The Subscription Rooms, Stroud Saturday, July 19 Roger McGough, Liverpool poet and chart-bothering pop type with The Scaffold (a cross between "...Atomic Kitten and Oasis..." apparently), wowed Stroud last weekend with a delicious reading from his superbly accessible poetry, much of it from the latest book, Everyday Eclipses.
His set is sublimely planned - moving from poems on his Liverpool upbringing to poems about his children and finally poems about death - yet it feels spontaneous. The same could be said of his poetry, which takes complicated forms, such as a villanelle in celebration of mothers in leather trousers ("Blessed are the children and lucky the spouses/Who live with Mothers in Leather Trousers."), and themes, such as the awkward nostalgia for youth, and makes them feel like a particularly enjoyable discussion. Poetry is supposed to be heightened speech, a trait most apparent in McGough's writing. He takes the rhythm of everyday Liverpudlian banter and condenses it into something affecting and memorable - his insistence that his parents read to him "...by the light of a blazing factory..." is a case in point. It is Everyday Eclipses, the title poem of the new book, that perfectly captures his appeal though. Commissioned to write a poem about the total eclipse a few years ago, he turned in a celebration of the ordinary, the routine, that points out the extraordinariness of life: "In the fruit bowl, the orange rolls in front of the peach/Every day eclipses another day." One thing is for certain; few poets eclipse Roger McGough's warm, tender and affecting wit. (This article originally appeared in the Stroud News And Journal July 2003) © Adam Horovitz
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The joy of McGough is that his poems,
new or old, sound as if one has heard them before, a long time ago; it
feels like being reunited with old friends every time he reads. He's aided
in this by his voice - a droll, sober lilt that cohabits with nostalgia,
sarcasm and surrealism equally happily.