''The Mersey Sound'' is an anthology of poems by

Liverpool poets The Liverpool poets are a number of influential 1960s poets from Liverpool, England, influenced by 1950s Beat poetry. They were involved in the 1960s Liverpool scene that gave rise to The Beatles. Their work is characterised by its directness of e ...

Roger McGough Roger Joseph McGough (; born 9 November 1937) is an English poet, performance poet, broadcaster, children's author and playwright. He presents the BBC Radio 4 programme '' Poetry Please'', as well as performing his own poetry. McGough was one ...

Brian Patten Brian Patten (born 7 February 1946) is an English poet and author. He came to prominence in the 1960s as one of the Liverpool poets, and writes primarily lyrical poetry about human relationships. His famous works include "Little Johnny's Confessi ...

and

Adrian Henri Adrian Henri (10 April 1932 – 20 December 2000) was a British poet and painter best remembered as the founder of poetry-rock group the Liverpool Scene and as one of three poets in the best-selling anthology '' The Mersey Sound'', along with ...

first published in 1967, when it launched the poets into "considerable acclaim and critical fame"."XIV Modern Literature, section 5", John Brannigan
Accessed April 9, 2006 It went on to sell over 500,000 copies, becoming one of the bestselling poetry anthologies of all time. The poems are characterised by "accessibility, relevance and lack of pretension", as well as humour, liveliness and at times melancholy. The book was, and continues to be, widely influential with its direct and often witty language, urban references such as plastic

daffodil ''Narcissus'' is a genus of predominantly spring flowering perennial plants of the amaryllis family, Amaryllidaceae. Various common names including daffodil,The word "daffodil" is also applied to related genera such as ''Sternbergia'', ''Ism ...

s and bus conductors, and frank, but sensitive (and sometimes romantic) depictions of intimacy.

History

''The Mersey Sound'' is number 10 in a series of slim paperbacks originally published in the 1960s by Penguin in a series called

Penguin Modern Poets ''Penguin Modern Poets'' was a series of 27 poetry books published by Penguin Books in the 1960s and 1970s, each containing work by three contemporary poets (mostly but not exclusively British and American). The series was begun in 1962 and publis ...

. Each book assembled work by three compatible poets. Number 6, for example, contained poems by

George MacBeth George Mann MacBeth (19 January 1932 – 16 February 1992) was a Scottish poet and novelist. Biography George MacBeth was born in Shotts, Lanarkshire, Scotland. When he was three, his family moved to Sheffield in England. He was educated in Sh ...

Edward Lucie-Smith John Edward McKenzie Lucie-Smith (born 27 February 1933), known as Edward Lucie-Smith, is a Jamaican-born English writer, poet, art critic, curator and broadcaster. He has been highly prolific in these fields, writing or editing over a hundred ...

and

Jack Clemo Reginald John Clemo (11 March 1916 – 25 July 1994) was a British poet and writer who was strongly associated both with his native Cornwall and his strong Christian belief. His work was considered to be visionary and inspired by the rugged Cor ...

. The other books in the series were not given a specific title. The first edition of ''The Mersey Sound'' contains 128 pages, the half-title page being number 1. Henri is first with 44 pages (30 poems), then McGough with 32 pages (24 poems) and Patten with 31 pages (26 poems). A "revised and expanded" edition was published in 1974, with a cover showing an electric guitar and a total of 152 pages. Another revised edition came out in 1983, by which time more than 250,000 copies of the two previous editions had been sold. The third edition has "Revised Edition" as a subtitle, but on the cover only, with a photograph of the three poets taken by Dmitri Kasterine. Extra poems, such as Henri's "The Entry of Christ into Liverpool," helped to take the total number of pages to 160, but some of the reprinted poems had been revised in the meantime, and some were omitted, such as McGough's "Why Patriots Are a Bit Nuts In the Head". The blurb mentions the revisions, but there is no explanation for the omissions. There was also the addition of short biographies of each poet. Another book in the same format, and with complementary graphics, was also published in 1983, titled ''New Volume'' and with all new poems by each poet, and the same biographies as in the revised edition. Again the space is weighted in favour of Henri, at 57 pages, with McGough having 33 pages and Patten 35 pages, though they each have two more poems included than Henri, whose section includes longer sequences such as "From 'Autobiography'". Both the revised and second revised issues are now out of print, the re-editing in these editions effectively superseded by more thorough collected editions of the poets' individual works. To mark the 50th anniversary of its publication, the 2007 reissue (within the

Penguin Modern Classics Penguin Classics is an imprint of Penguin Books under which classic works of literature are published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean among other languages. Literary critics see books in this series as important members of the Wester ...

imprint, and subtitled "Restored 50th Anniversary Edition") reverted to the original 1967 text.

Poems

Henri took the title of the poem, "Tonight at Noon", from a Charles Mingus LP. He uses it three times in the poem, the first two to introduce a list of contradictions, such as "Supermarkets will add 3d EXTRA on everything" and "The first daffodils of autumn will appear/when the leaves fall upwards to the trees". Having set up this expectation, the poem ends poignantly with:

and
You will tell me you love me
Tonight at noon

McGough's "At Lunchtime A Story of Love" is based on then-current fears of a

nuclear holocaust A nuclear holocaust, also known as a nuclear apocalypse, nuclear Armageddon, or atomic holocaust, is a theoretical scenario where the mass detonation of nuclear weapons causes globally widespread destruction and radioactive fallout. Such a scenar ...

. The poet explains the world is going to end at lunchtime in order to persuade a passenger on the bus to make love with him. She did, but it didn't, and "Thatnight, on the bus coming home,/we were all alittle embarrassed..." (The joining of words to make a single word is a characteristic of McGough's work.) The poet "always/having been a bitofalad" then says, "it was a pity that the world didn't nearly/end every lunchtime and that we could always/pretend...", which they proceed to do. He sees the potential to change the world, when this ready excuse for shedding inhibitions and making love spreads, so that everywhere

people pretended that the world was coming
to an end at lunchtime. It still hasn't.
Although in a way it has.

All the poets are capable of a range of emotions and responses, but Patten is regarded as the most serious in tone of the three. "Party Piece" is the first poem in his section, where the poet suggests to a woman that they "make gentle pornography with one another", which they do. The ultimate unfulfillment of the encounter is captured when the poem ends:

And later he caught a bus and she a train
And all there was between them then
was rain.

There is a certain amount of interplay between the three poets. McGough's poem "Aren't We All" also describes a casual sexual encounter at a party with a rather more wry tone:

There's the moon trying to look romantic
Moon's too old that's her trouble
Aren't we all?

The cross-reference is overt on occasion. McGough has a six-line poem, "Vinegar", where he compares himself to a priest buying fish and chips, thinking it would be nice "to buy supper for two". Henri includes "Poem for Roger McGough", which describes a nun similarly thinking what it would be like to "buy groceries for two" in a supermarket.

Context

The three poets were active in "swinging" Liverpool at a time when it was a centre of world attention, due to the eruption of

The Beatles The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all time and were integral to the developmen ...

and the associated bands, known generically as the "Mersey Sound", after which the book is titled. Phil Bowen in ''A Gallery to Play To: The Story of the Mersey Poets'' considers that the poets were as central to their generation as the poets centred on

W. H. Auden Wystan Hugh Auden (; 21 February 1907 – 29 September 1973) was a British-American poet. Auden's poetry was noted for its stylistic and technical achievement, its engagement with politics, morals, love, and religion, and its variety in ...

were to theirs. He distinguishes between them and other contemporary "underground" poets such as

Michael Horovitz Michael Yechiel Ha-Levi Horovitz (4 April 1935 – 7 July 2021) was a German-born British poet, editor, visual artist and translator who was a leading part of the Beat Poetry scene in the UK. In 1959, while still a student, he founded the "tr ...

and Pete Brown, who modelled themselves and their verse forms on the American Beat Generation poets, whereas the Liverpool trio derived their major inspiration from the environment in which they lived. He even suggests that ''The Mersey Sound'' might not have been published at all, had it not been for the focus that Liverpool had generated musically.

Contemporary effect

It has been said of the 1960s: "the rebirth of poetry then was largely due to the humour and fresh appeal of this collection." The book had a magical effect on many people who read it, opening their eyes from "dull" poetry to a world of accessible language and the evocative use of everyday symbolism. Leading anthologist,

Neil Astley Neil Astley, Hon. FRSL (born 12 May 1953) is an English publisher, editor and writer. He is best known as the founder of the poetry publishing house Bloodaxe Books. Life and work Astley was born in Portchester, Hampshire, and grew up in nearby Fa ...

, describes how he had been reading the classic poets at school in the 1960s, and one day his teacher read from ''The Mersey Sound'': "That woke us up." The same experience is described by a freelance writer Sid Smith years later in a 2005 blog, looking back at his first encounter with the book in 1968, when again a teacher read from it:

Legacy

The three poets in ''The Mersey Sound'' paved the way for later performance and "people's" poets, such as

John Cooper Clarke John Cooper Clarke (born 25 January 1949) is an English performance poet, who first became famous as a " punk poet" in the late 1970s. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he released several albums. Around this time, he performed on stage with se ...

Benjamin Zephaniah Benjamin Obadiah Iqbal Zephaniah (born 15 April 1958)Gregory, Andy (2002), ''International Who's Who in Popular Music 2002'', Europa, p. 562. . is a British writer and dub poet. He was included in ''The Times'' list of Britain's top 50 post-wa ...

Linton Kwesi Johnson Linton Kwesi Johnson (born 24 August 1952), also known as LKJ, is a Jamaica-born, British-based dub poet and activist. In 2002 he became the second living poet, and the only black one, to be published in the Penguin Modern Classics series. His p ...

Attila the Stockbroker John Baine (born 21 October 1957), better known by his stage name Attila the Stockbroker,Strong, Martin C. (2003) ''The Great Indie Discography'', Canongate, , p. 208 is an English punk poet, multi instrumentalist musician and songwriter. He pe ...

John Hegley John Richard Hegley (born 1 October 1953) is an English performance poet, comedian, musician and songwriter. Early life He was born in the Newington Green area of Islington, London, England, into a Roman Catholic household. He was brought up i ...

and others who "have pursued the goal of creating poetry for a wide audience". The idea of titling after a river was later adopted by

The Medway Poets The Medway Poets were founded in Medway, Kent, in 1979. They were an English punk based poetry performance group and later formed the core of the first Stuckists Art Group. The members were Miriam Carney, Billy Childish, Robert Earl, Bill Lewis ...

in 1979. They read with Henri, McGough and Patten on occasion.

Paul Weller Paul John Weller (born John William Weller; 25 May 1958) is an English singer-songwriter and musician. Weller achieved fame with the punk rock/ new wave/mod revival band the Jam (1972–1982). He had further success with the blue-eyed soul mu ...

The Jam The Jam were an English mod revival/ punk rock band formed in 1972 at Sheerwater Secondary School in Woking, Surrey. They released 18 consecutive Top 40 singles in the United Kingdom, from their debut in 1977 to their break-up in December 1 ...

has expressed his admiration for the poets, particularly Henri. The second Jam album ''This Is the Modern World'' has a track with the same title as the Henri poem, "Tonight At Noon" and the lyrics are a collage tribute to Henri's poetry. The book was one which stayed with some of its readers for years afterwards, and could help form bonds, as 1960s reader of it, Sid Smith, describes:

Flashing forward to the 90s and I’ve just met a woman called Debra at a party. We are introduced by a mutual friend and get talking. Somehow poetry comes into the conversation. “One of my favourite collections is The Mersey Sound” she tells me and in that moment I knew my life was going to change forever.

As the early readers of the book got families of their own, they could find the simple language and rhyme of some of the poems suitable for bedtime reading for their children."Book Review", Sue Lander, ''Bradworthy News, 2000''
Accessed April 9, 2006 In addition all three poets went on to also write dedicated and successful books of children's poetry. In 2002 the three poets were given the Freedom of the City of Liverpool.

References

External links

Interview with Roger McGough about republication of Mersey Sound 40 years on
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mersey Sound, The 1967 poetry books English poetry anthologies