Roger McGough

Co-founder of the "Mersey Sound" school of poetry, and one of our best-loved contemporary poets...

09/11/1937 -

Roger McGough biography and information

Award-winning poet, playwright, broadcaster and children's author Roger McGough was born on 9 November 1937 in Liverpool, England. He was educated at St Mary's College, Crosby, Liverpool, and at Hull University. He taught at St Kevin's Comprehensive School, Kirby, and lectured at Mabel Fletcher College in Liverpool and at the Liverpool College of Art. Between 1963 and 1973 he was a member of the pop music/poetry group 'The Scaffold'.

He made his name as one of the 'Liverpool Poets' with Adrian Henri and Brian Patten, included in The Mersey Sound: Penguin Modern Poets 10 (1967). A Fellow of John Moores University in Liverpool, he won a Cholmondeley Award in 1999 and was awarded an honorary MA from Nene College of Further Education. He was Fellow of Poetry at the University of Loughborough (1973-5), Honorary Professor at Thames Valley University (1993) and is a member of the Executive Council of the Poetry Society. He was awarded an OBE in 1997.

His Collected Poems, anthologising over forty years of McGough's poetry, was published in 2003, and his autobiography, Said and Done, was published in 2005.