The Liverpool Poets

The Liverpool Poets- Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten but not necessarily in that order - are the subject of tomorrow evening's monthly meeting of the Portsmouth Poetry Society. St. Mark's Church, Derby Road, PO2 8HR. Introduced by me old mucker, Kevin Rogers, which is how Rod Stewart refers to Ronnie Wood. We ain't been together as such for very long but it already feels like we have, for good reasons not bad.

In the 1970's, as an embryo 'poet', the Liverpool Poets were like a godsend to me. They were pop music and yet passed for 'poetry'. Roger was once considered in the running for Poet Laureate. They weren't difficult. The fact that I passed over them in my university dissertation on British Poetry since 1945, in 1980, was questioned.

But, surely, we are talking about serious people, something a bit more 'highbrow', rather than these cheeky chancers who, as it turned out, made a good living out of coming from Liverpool, where the Beatles came from, being the English reply to the American 'Beat Poets', who definitely were taken seriously, and one of them becoming Top of the Pops with Lily the Pink. 

Quite why the likes of Elizabeth Bishop, Seamus Heaney and, still, Philip Larkin were  concentrating on writing such finely-crafted poems when one could attract multiples of the audience for that by doing a sort of music hall act, halfway between comedian and the sentimental idea of the 'poet' as the dreamy, thoughtful loner is hard to say but maybe they put art above box office.

Adrian Henri was the British answer to Allen Ginsberg in the same way that Cliff Richard was to Elvis Presley, and I'd rather have the 'safer' version, if that's what they were, in both cases. Roger's best claim to artistic success was how he re-worked e.e. cummings, like a sort of quirky, poetry Erik Satie. He almost could have got away with it but he was a commercial artist, had his act to sell and fell, quite successfully, really, between art, whimsy and 'comedy'. 

Having made a living out of it, and still working, I think, at 88, if I were him I'd be wondering if what I'd left behind was what I'd meant or if I could have been more honest about it and been more like John Gorman.

Which leaves us with Brian Patten, who was the upstart, pretty young one in The Mersey Sound, who - tempus fugit - died, aged 79, at end of September. How cute was he when he was the Davy Jones, the good looking one, who seemed somehow more traditionally 'poet' than the performance constructs the other two had set up for themselves.

I met them in 1979. I'm sure we all did. I was thrilled to. At that time, I'd have rather have met them than David Bowie. But we get over it eventually.

There might be such as thing as 'cool'. I suspect it's an apparition.

There was a time it applied to applied to the Liverpool Poets. And, yes, I think it was.