What will we have learned from stillness and silence?
From sharing, not taking? Waiting not pushing?
Whispering not shouting? Dawdling not rushing?
Safety in Numbers is a new collection from the nation’s favourite poet. Traversing rocky terrain with the assurance of a poetry Rover on Mars, McGough brings down to earth the strangeness of a year that was almost lost. Staycations, ghosts, gamblers, hurricanes in a hurry and small kindnesses. Unexpected voices, a nature trail, adultery in lockdown, time to stand & stare and how to write verse about Liverpool. This is an evening of poetry and love and intimacies and daffodils. You Have Been Warned.
With the gift of many tongues, playful, surreal and tender, McGough ‘a trickster you can trust’ reveals the telling moments of our times.
President of the Poetry Society, he has been honoured with a CBE for services to literature and the Freedom of the City of Liverpool. After Lily The Pink, the Aintree Iron, Scaffold, GRIMMS, The Mersey Sound with Adrian Henri & Brian Patten and his Molière adaptations with English Touring Theatre, Roger presents the long-running Poetry Please. The beat goes on.
"The godfather of modern British poetry" Metro
"Brilliantly entertaining, a legend" Chris Hawkins, BBC Radio 6 Music Presenter
"A voice of calm in a world of madness" Nick Dalton, Record Collector
"The patron saint of poetry" Carol Ann Duffy
"Liverpool's own Poet Laureate" Daily Post
www.rogermcgough.org.uk // @McgoughRoger
Safety in Numbers (pub.9 Nov’21, Penguin)
Presented by UK Touring
Photograph by Allan Melia
