McGOUGH, Roger

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Nationality: British. Born: Liverpool, Lancashire, 9 November 1937. Education: St. Mary's College, Crosby, Lancashire; Hull University, Yorkshire, B.A. in French and geography 1957, Cert. Ed.1960. Family: Married 1) Thelma Monaghan in 1970 (dissolved1980), two sons; 2) Hilary Clough in 1986, one son and one daughter. Career: Schoolteacher, Liverpool, 1960–64; lecturer, Liverpool College of Art, 1969–70; poetry fellow, University of Loughborough, Leicestershire, 1973–75. Formerly member of the performing group The Scaffold. Freelance writer and performer. Awards: Signal award, 1984, 1998; BAFTA award, for television play, 1985; Royal Television Society award, 1992; Cholmondeley award, 1998. Honorary professor, Thames Valley University, 1993. Fellow, John Moores University, 1999. O.B.E. (Officer, Order of the British Empire), 1997. Agent: Peters, Fraser & Dunlop, Drury House, 34–43 Russell Street, London WC2B 5HA, England.

Publications

Poetry

The Mersey Sound: Penguin Modern Poets 10, with Adrian Henri and Brian Pattern. London, Penguin, 1967; revised edition, 1974,1983.

Frinck, A Life in the Day of, and Summer with Monika: Poems (novel and verse). London, Joseph, and New York, Ballantine, 1967; revised edition of Summer with Monika, London, Deutsch, 1978.

Watchwords. London, Cape, 1969.

After the Merrymaking. London, Cape, 1971.

Out of Sequence. London, Turret, 1973.

Gig. London, Cape, 1973.

Sporting Relations. London, Eyre Methuen, 1974.

In the Glassroom. London, Cape, 1976.

Holiday on Death Row. London, Cape, 1979.

Unlucky for Some. London, Bernard Stone, 1980.

Waving at Trains. London, Cape, 1982.

New Volume, with Adrian Henri and Brian Patten. London, Penguin, 1983.

Crocodile Puddles. London, Pyramid, 1984.

Melting into the Foreground. London, Viking, 1986.

Selected Poems. London, Cape, 1989.

Blazing Fruit. London, Penguin, 1990.

You at the Back. London, Puffin, 1991.

Defying Gravity. London, Penguin, 1993.

The Way Things Are. London, Viking, 1999.

Recordings: The Incredible New Liverpool Scene, CBS, 1967; McGough McGear, Parlophone; "Scaffold" Live at Queen Elizabeth Hall, Parlophone; "Scaffold" L. The P., Parlophone; Grimms, Island; Fresh Liver, Island; Sleepers, DJM; McGoughl Patten, Argo; Summer with Monika, Island, 1978; Gifted Wreckage, with Brian Patten and Adrian Henri, Talking Tape, 1984; Jelly Pie, with Brian Patten, Puffin, 1987.

Plays

Birds, Marriages and Deaths, with others (produced London, 1964).

The Chauffeur-Driven Rolls (produced Liverpool, 1966).

The Commission (produced Liverpool, 1967).

The Puny Little Life Show (produced London, 1969). Published in Open Space Plays, edited by Charles Marowitz, London, Penguin, 1974.

Zones (produced Edinburgh, 1969).

Stuff (produced London, 1970).

P.C. Plod (produced London, 1971).

Wordplay (produced London, 1975).

Summer with Monika, music by Andy Roberts (produced London, 1978).

Watchwords (produced Nottingham, 1979).

Like Father, Like Son, Like (produced Nottingham, 1980).

Lifeswappers (produced Edinburgh and London, 1980).

All the Trimmings, music by Peter Brewis (produced London, 1980).

Golden Nights and Golden Days (produced on tour, 1980).

Behind the Lines (revue), with Brian Patten (produced London, 1982).

The Mouthtrap, with Brian Patten (produced Edinburgh and London, 1982).

Wind in the Willows (lyrics only, with William Perry), book by Jane Iredale, music by Perry, adaptation of the story by Kenneth Grahame (produced Washington, D.C., 1984; New York, 1985).

A Matter of Chance, adaptation of a story by Nabokov (produced Edinburgh and London, 1988).

Screenplay: Plod, 1972.

Radio Plays: Gruff: A TV Commercial, 1977; Walking the Dog, 1981; The Narrator, 1985; FX, 1989.

Television Plays: The Lifeswappers, 1976; Kurt, B.P. Mungo, and Me, 1983; Fast Forward (for children), 1986; Mistaken Identity, 1990; Little Red Riding Hood, 1991; The Elements, 1992; The Curse of the Methuselah Tree, 2000.

Other (for children)

Mr. Noselighter. London, G. Whizzard, 1976.

You Tell Me, with Michael Rosen. London, Kestrel, 1979.

The Great Smile Robbery. London, Kestrel, 1982.

Sky in the Pie. London, Kestrel, 1983.

The Stowaways. London, Viking Kestrel, 1986.

Noah's Ark. London, Dinosaur, 1986.

Nailing the Shadow. London, Viking Kestrel, 1987.

An Imaginary Menagerie. London, Viking Kestrel, 1988.

Helen Highwater. London, Viking, 1989.

Counting by Numbers. London, Viking Kestrel, 1989.

Pillow Talk. London, Viking, 1990.

The Lighthouse That Ran Away. London, Bodley Head, 1990.

My Dad's a Fire Eater. London, Puffin, 1992.

Another Custard Pie. London, Collins, 1993.

Lucky. London, Puffin, 1994.

The Magic Fountain. London, Bodley Head, 1995.

Stinkers Ahoy! London, Viking, 1995.

The Kite and Caitlin. London, Bodley Head, 1996.

Until I Met Dudley. N.p., Francis Lincoln, 1997.

Bad, Bad Cats. London, Puffin, 1997.

Other

Editor, Strictly Private: An Anthology of Poetry. London, Kestrel, 1981.

Editor, The Kingfisher Book of Comic Verse. London, Kingfisher, 1986.

Editor, The Kingfisher Book of Poems about Love. London, Kingfisher, 1997.

Editor, The Ring of Words. London, Faber, 1998.

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Manuscript Collection: University of Hull.

Critical Study: "Roger McGough: The Popstar Poet" by John Gough, in Children's Literature Association Quarterly (Battle Creek, Michigan), 10(4), winter 1986.

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Of the three original Liverpool poets, it is Roger McGough who most obviously combines the roles of writer and performer in his work. From his collaborations with Adrian Henri and Brian Patten through brief pop stardom with The Scaffold and beyond, the performance element is present in virtually all of his poems, bringing with it the familiar echoes of circus, pantomime, and old-time music hall. The wit and verbal mastery that are his main gifts find straightforward expression in a style whose apparent simplicity often hides the skill behind it. This ability allows McGough to write equally well for children and adults without condescending or altering his approach. Sky in the Pie, for instance, shows the same quirky humor and sly wordplay that distinguish the adult collections, not only in its surreal title poem but also in the more down-to-earth "Snowman" and "Pantomime Poem," the latter revealing an important source of inspiration. Measured beside Henri and Patten, McGough is the natural comic of the trio, although his humor is frequently under-pinned with serious intentions. His writing tends more to amusement than to bitter anger, and polemics from him are few and far between and are usually made from a humanitarian rather than a political standpoint. The antiwar "A Square Dance," in which the poet addresses the doomed troops in the style of a hoedown caller, and the antiracist "I'm Dreaming of a White Smethwick" ("May your days be merry and bright /And may all your citizens be white") are typical examples.

McGough's main concern is with the flaws and frailties of human nature and the joys and vicissitudes of love. These he regards with a wry detachment, aided by his skill in making the real seem strange: "for in the morning /when a policeman /disguised as the sun /creeps into your room /and your mother /disguised as birds /calls from the trees /you will put on a dress of guilt /and shoes with broken high ideals." With McGough the actual blurs into the world of dream, with inanimate objects taking on human characteristics while people metamorphose into pets or programmed robots. The horror he introduces is of a semicomic kind found in certain fairy stories or on the pantomime stage. "The Scarecrow" and the man-eating pigs of "The Lake" belong to such a genre.

All the same, McGough's involvement with the human race is real enough, and at times his laughter is tinged with sympathy and compassion. "Head Injury" portrays the nightmare world of the damaged victim ("I feel a colour coming, mottled, mainly black") by one who has clearly taken the trouble to live inside his mind. More touching is the poignant scene in "The Identification" in which a distraught father, faced with the charred body of his son, struggles to explain why the boy was carrying cigarettes when he had been forbidden to smoke. In such moments as these McGough's matter-of-fact delivery and avoidance of sentimentality bring home the meaning of the tragedy to those concerned. Poems like "The Identification" are proof of a talent that in his case is too often overlooked.

Human tragedy apart, there are few subjects on which McGough cannot raise a smile. He makes frequent jibes at poetry itself in works like "I Don't Like the Poems" or "Take a Poem, Miss Smith," in which various stock clichés are dictated by the bored poet to his alltoo-compliant secretary. His ability to laugh at himself has never been in question, from the early amused resignation of "Aren't We All" to his tongue-in-cheek assessment of McGough the rock star: "I was somebody then (the one on the right /with glasses singing Lily the Pink)." His penchant for punning and wordplay reemerges in "Nottingham," where he rejects the thought of seducing an English lit student, not wishing to be "laid /alongside our literary heritage /allocated my place in her /golden treasury of flesh." Guilty at all times of "poetic licentiousness," McGough sees his poetry as a subversive act, a flying in the face of the canons of respectable taste: "May they [your poems] break and enter, assault and batter /and loiter in the mind with intent … /may they bushwhack bandwagons /then take to the hills /may they break new wind …"

Later collections show a deepening concern with flawed humanity, a more evident compassion, while losing none of the keen perception found in McGough's earlier work. The wry, tragicomic family portraits of Melting into the Foreground, sharply but affectionately drawn from life, rank with the best of McGough's writing. So, too, for different reasons, does his presentation of the mindless rapist in "The Jogger's Song," where the true horror of the act is laid bare in the attacker's own excuses.

McGough's later collections also continue to reveal his wit and invention, his flair for putting an unusual slant on the commonplace and his skill in expressing the full range of emotions through his verse. In the title poem of Defying Gravity he is forced to contemplate the death of a close friend, while "Cinders" recalls his meeting his young daughter after a school pantomime, a meeting that brings awareness of his own mortality and of his vulnerability as a father. The Way Things Are sees the poet firing off wickedly amusing salvos in all directions, the sad and the comic blended as they so often are in real life. McGough presents wry pictures of suburbia ("Posh") and of inner-city deprivation ("Shite"), satirizes Hollywood imagery in "Casablanca" with his story of a Scouser uncle's exotic girlfriend, and mocks rose-tinted nostalgia in "Old-Fashioned Values." "The Heath Forecast" is a hilarious application of BBC speak to the human body, while self-mockery surfaces in "Trust Me, I'm a Poet," in which McGough presents himself as a smooth-talking con artist in search of funds. In "Coach and Horses" he comments that "writing, like skinning beermats, is a displacement activity," and in "The Wrong Beds" he comes to the sad conclusion that "life is a hospital ward, and the beds we are put in /are the ones we don't want to be in…" "What Happened to Dorothy" once more presents life's tragic side, an old photograph bringing back the memory of a child scalded to death: "There's Dorothy, still seven." In the meantime works such as Pillow Talk and Stinkers Ahoy! maintain his appeal to a younger audience, while two excellent selections — You at the Back and Blazing Fruit—bring together the pick of his adult poetry from the previous twenty years and provide a useful perspective on his highly individual talent.

McGough's seriousness is real, if not always immediately apparent. His insights are keen, his touch deft and assured and never unduly labored. These light-fingered but winning ways continue to draw readers to him whatever the fluctuations of poetic fashion.

—Geoff Sadler