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.
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