Roger McGough

Roger McGough – ‘The Patron Saint of Poetry’ – is a poetry legend. Born in Liverpool, he was a member of the group Scaffold in the 1960s when he contributed poems to “The Mersey Sound”. That book alone has since sold more than a million copies and is now published as a Penguin classic. 

We are delighted to welcome Roger as this year’s Stroud Book Festival guest poet. In a funny and thoughtful hour of poetry reading, anecdotes and musings he’ll perform work from his landmark anthology, “Collected Poems: 1959 to 2024”, a distillation of his best work from more than 40 books over 60 years. He’ll take in the Mersey-soaked sound of his early work, political sendups, pandemic playfulness and more, as well as some new writing.