Brilliant, timely poems from Roger McGough

Safety in Numbers

Penguin

When I started to voluntarily read poetry in the very late 1980s, it was via the Mersey Sound poets I was pointed toward and whose work I discovered I loved. Poetry, before then, had been the absolute worst pat of my English literature studies at school!

Lord love a duck – I ended up, for my sin of not understanding how to revise properly – having to study Keats three times! Even now, I can only bear part of that poet's Sonnet to Autumn – and that is all of his work that I can stand!

 

Before our actual O’ level studies began at my (state) girls’ grammar school in Manchester, we had briefly been introduced to something or other by Seamus Heaney, and that had piqued my interest at least a little, but I had no opportunity to follow it through.

 

I wrote a couple of quite lengthy poems in my late teens, including one that was a Lancashire spoof of Romeo and Juliet ... “Archibald, Archibald, wherefore art thou, Archibald” ... which might say something. Juvenilia, eh?

 

But while I dabbled over the subsequent decades – dabbled in terms of reading verse, not in terms of writing it – that was exclusively in terms of occasional forays into the world of Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten, whether individually or collectively as the mainstays of the Liverpool poets.

 

Then, right at the start of the first UK lockdown, I suddenly took up my computer again and started poeting. Out of the blue, it became a way to express myself – about lockdown and the pandemic itself, and aboutr some pretty big Life Events that had occurred in the few years immediately beforehand. I didn't expect it or look for it, but that was what happened.

 

This might seem like a long sell, but I’m penning (keyboarding?) a blog, not writing a newspaper piece, so ... bear with, bear with. Or if you don't want to, then fine – farewell.

 

But in early lockdown No1, I started consuming poetry in previously unknown amounts – what does a poetry overdose look like?

 

Anyway, when Penguin’s new edition of Liverpool poet Roger McGough’s verse, Safety in Numbers, was advertised for pre-order, I leapt to do just that.

 

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a collective experience on a rare scale. McGough himself is 84 (looking good on it, though, judging by his social media avatar ... I can only hope for similar for myself).

 

But if you imagine that the age thing is irrelevant, it’s not. Divided into age – and healthy/unhealthy – older people have been massively affected by this virus. Yet as this collection illustrates ... ‘old people’ are not ‘dead or nearly dead’ people.

 

And what is age anyway?

 

It’s a brilliant collection. McGough creates remarkably easy verse to read, but don’t assume that that means it’s either easy or sloppy intellectually speaking. It’s neither. This is brilliant challenge for all of us in these harrowing times.

 

It borrows from some of his previous poems, twisting them to make new points. It deals with the sense of one’s own impending mortality – not least in the wonderful Pascal’s wager-like In My Corner. 

 

Advice on Writing a Poem suggests don’t! Don’t write any poetry ... but then cites some of those who have ignored such advice, up to and including Amanda Gorman. He’s bang up to date and still self-deprecatory in the best possible way – and don't treat him as someone who has the final word.

 

There are threads running through the collection about ageing ... about memory and the dread fear of memory loss (see Norse mythology and Odin – this is old stuff), which he tackles apparently lightly, yet with great heft. He touches on climate change and the despair at politicians globally doing little.

 

There’s the fear of the pandemic – and the unspoken, for many of us – question of whether we will ever see ‘normal’ again and even, what was ‘normal’ in the first place?

 

Throughout, there is a rhythm that makes this a sublimely easy collection to read. But do not be deceived: while hugely enjoyable and accessible, McGough has serious things to say to us all today.

 

This really is a superb collection and well, well worth spending time over.

 

Abba provide a new step on a life’s musical voyage

When Abba last released an album of new work, it was 40 years ago. It was a different world. I was ... coughs ... a mere teenager, studying for A’ levels that included music.

Like millions of other listeners, the Swedish quartet had been a part of life since Waterloo, but while I liked their music, I didn’t own any discs or cassettes.

With little pocket money – and a mother reluctant to buy ‘pop’ music for her daughters at birthdays or Christmas – musical presents tended to be classical.

 

My parents were – but were not – music snobs: they had a relatively small collection themselves, including at most, a handful of genuine classical albums, plus my father’s aspirational acquisitions of several boxed sets of Readers’ Digest ‘greatest ever classic tunes’, which I have little memory of ever spinning on the deck.

 

Indeed, as a family, we listened to little music, though I remember my mother listening to Ed Stewpot on the radio at the weekends in the kitchen. Memory can be unreliable – not least as the decades move on – but my only memory of hearing classical music at home was at Christmas, when helping my mother decorate the house as she played her boxed set of Solti’s Messiah.

 

Beyond that, there were occasional spurts of my father’s beloved Johann Strauss II, together with an album of the very poor man’s Waltz King, Waldteufel.

 

That I was studying music in 1981 was down to the lucky accident of having been introduced to classical music, via Prokofiev’s Lieutenant Kijé Suite, at my first (state) girls’ grammar school some years earlier.

 

To invoke Sondheim, I’ve been through Cassidy, the Rollers and more (and already loved lots of show music enough that I could sing almost entire scores from memory), but Kijé made a big difference to my life.

 

If I was listening to something more contemporary – I couldn’t cope with most 20^th classical music until relatively recently – then it was the likes of Kraftwerk, Ultravox and OMD.

 

And yet, and yet ... when my Abba-loving sister ditched her one Abba recording, a seven-inch Chiquitita, guess whose collection it ended up in? It was a number of years before I actually bought any Abba – and then it was Gold, on CD. In recent years, as The Other Half and I have actually invested in a quality record deck, amp etc, I have bought a number of works on vinyl by Ultravox, Kraftwerk and OMD – and Abba Gold.

 

Yet as my love and appreciation and knowledge of classical music has grown over the decades, so has my love of Abba.

 

In crossover mode, I also bought Benny’s Deutsche Grammophon piano album on CD. Because ... if Deutsche Grammophon think it’s worth being connected with ...

 

I left it until late, but I did actually pre-order the new album. And then our needle broke – just before it arrived. So today, I have had the chance to listen.

 

First up, and most important, this is Abba. It sounds like Abba because it is Abba! No ... 40 years haven’t seen the band morph into something different. And honestly, if you want Abba influenced by all the trends in pop music over the last four decades, then really ... you don’t want Abba!

 

So, a few notes on the album itself – to note, I have the blue 180g vinyl release.

 

I’ll start with the concluding track on side one, Just a Notion, which was first recorded in 1978, but never released. This has a deliciously punchy disco beat, great piano line and just the right number of minor chords to be a classic Abba track.

 

I absolutely love it. I have it playing digitally as I’m writing and I’m basically dancing in my seat. Bittersweet, as with so much of Abba – both melodically and lyrically – really superior, feelgood pop. It is fab!

 

That’s my track of the album – but that’s not to say the rest is poor. Far from it. I Still Have Faith has similar qualities.

 

Don’t Shut Me Down is a fine track and, as with so much of Abba’s oeuvre, it’s deceptively bright music to accompany lyrics that reflect less-than-perfect grown-up lives.

 

Some have whinged about Little Things, the Christmas track, but really, while it’s not stunning, but it’s nowhere near as offensive as some are pretending. No ... it is NOT worse that execrable St Winnifred’s School Choir and Grandma, I love You. And if you think it is, then you should seek help.

 

The album concludes with Ode to Freedom, another contemplative track, that, the more you listen to it, grows with you.

 

Indeed, this is all typically deceptive Abba – it’s candy floss but it's not; it's far more than that and, I suspect, people will still be listening to and discussing this in another 40 years when I will likely be long gone.