McGough, Roger

McGough, Roger (1937- ), English poet and songwriter. Born in Liverpool, the son of a docker, he attended Hull University, where he met the poet Philip Larkin, and qualified as a teacher. One of the so-called “Liverpool Beat” poets, along with Adrian Henri and Brian Patten, his one-line poem for National LSD week went, simply: “Mind, how you go”. He was also, with John Gorman and Mike McGear (real name Mike McCartney), a member of the pop band The Scaffold, penning the hit, “Lily the Pink”. McGough’s laconic but comic and compassionate poems are characterized by a surreal sense of wordplay and typographical mayhem. As he himself puts it, in another poem: “roger mcgough is a modern / poet, one of that curious breed / who write in lower-case e’en / where capitals are decreed ... “. Or: “Got up / did my toilet: Washed / Shaved / Combed hair / My toilet looks much nicer now”. Not surprisingly, he has found more favour with his large children’s readership than with literary critics. His published works include Blazing Fruit: Selected Poems 1967-1987 (1990), You at the Back: Selected Poems Volume 2 (1991), and Collected Poems (2003). He was made an OBE in 1997 and a CBE in 2004.