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Product Description
Product Description
From laundrettes to contact lenses, Paul McCartney's trousers to plane crashes, McGough guides us through the pitfalls and idiosyncrasies of our illogical and unexciting lives, and finds the humour and drama hidden within. This new collection has a bonus section: in a series of wonderfully funny poems, responding to Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife McGough gives voice to a number of forgotten and longsuffering male figures: Lord Godiva, Mr Sappho, Mr Blyton, etc
Presenter of Radio 4's Poetry Please and Britain's foremost popular poet, McGough brings us this happy collision of life, language and imagination with his unique and witty wordplay. His recent adaptation of The Hypochondriac playing at the Liverpool Playhouse has had fantastic reviews where, as with all his writing, McGough "produces that rare sound, an audience rocking to rhyme" (Susannah Clapp, Observer)
About the Author
Roger McGough is one of Britain's best-known poetry voices. Following the success of the bestselling Penguin collection The Mersey Sound (with Brian Patten and the late Adrian Henri) he has been captivating children and adults alike with his unique blend of heart and wit for more than four decades. He is the regular presenter of Radio 4's Poetry Please programme. Much travelled and translated he is now an international ambassador for poetry and was honoured with the Freedom of the City of Liverpool in 2001, and with a CBE in 2005. In the last couple of years he has successfully adapted two Molière plays, Tartuffe and The Hypochondriac, for the Liverpool Everyman Theatre.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
Reading this book was just that - like meeting an old friend. I first made Roger Mcgough's "acquaintance! as it were, back in the 60s, with his performances with The Scaffold and the McGough/Henri/Patten book of poems, "The Mersey Sound". Even then, in the full flush (!) of youth, Roger demonstarted his ability to amuse and to move. Nearly half a century later, he still can raise smiles and tears - this time with an awareness of his own mortality, as seen in his "To My Final Poem", in this collection.I chuckled aloud at his "Mr Sappho" - as if the archetypical Lesbian had a chap! and "Mr of Arc". I finished this book feeling that I'd passed an hour with a long lost old mate - I strongly recommend "That Awkward Age" to readers of any age.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Roger McGough's latest collection of poems turns a sardonic if quietly celebratory eye on the vagaries of life's awkward age - the bit between birth and death. He is, you suspect, a poet who sees life as serious, but best approached in a whimsical frame of mind. That outlook undergirds verse on subjects as diverse as Meccano and death, love in a bus queue and the bitterness of Enid Blyton's husband, usurped in her affections by her literary creations. Some of McGough's odes (especially "To contact lenses") reach the heights of laugh-out-loud absurdity, and even his more playful offerings ("Not to mention the reader's") amuse, for the most part, rather than irritate. And if some of his ideas are a bit derivative (his seven poems in the voice of famous women's husbands owe a clear debt to Carol Ann Duffy's "The World's Wife"), he gives them his own inimitable stamp - the faintly bewildered tone of Mr Blyton, a man in the presence of something greater than himself that he only dimly comprehends, is a delight.
Yes, the tone occasionally dives into the sententious or the sentimental - the latter in poems like "Eternal Rest" - but not for long: two pages later comes along the discomfiting, cold-eyed stoicism of "I Am Not Sleeping". A rewarding and varied collection, then, if not the most devastatingly original or profound - but pretty much what you expect from one of the nation's favourite lighter poets.
Yes, the tone occasionally dives into the sententious or the sentimental - the latter in poems like "Eternal Rest" - but not for long: two pages later comes along the discomfiting, cold-eyed stoicism of "I Am Not Sleeping". A rewarding and varied collection, then, if not the most devastatingly original or profound - but pretty much what you expect from one of the nation's favourite lighter poets.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Lovely varied collection, with lots of humour and some quiet underlying seriousness. Good stuff for reading aloud as well as to oneself.
Most Recent Customer Reviews
A great collection
I love Roger McGough's poetry. His work was the first poetry to ever engage me emotionally rather than poetry to be learned by rote or explained for an exam. Read more
Published 17 months ago by Mrs. K. A. Wheatley
A great new work
Saw Mr McGough recently on his UK tour. He read lots of poems from this new volume. Loved it, took my copy along and got it signed too! Read more
Published 18 months ago by Chris
reminders of our youth
This was a gift for a friend who loves it, said it's fantastic and said it is a great read about growing up and getting through 'That Awkward Age'.
Published on 14 Jan 2010 by Martin W. O'shea
Worthwhile purchase!
I particularly enjoyed the poem about Alzheimer's Disease - having worked with people with dementia for many years. Well done Roger - fabulous book. Read more
Published on 30 Aug 2009 by Mrs. I. S. Paddock
The Awkward Age, indeed when is it?
I really enjoed these poems but it did make me ask the question "When is the awkward age?" It seems all ages have their awkward moments.
Published on 7 Aug 2009 by Mrs. E. M. Dart
Mrs e Irby
I enjoy all Rogers work and this is no exception, Just wish it was longer.
Published on 12 July 2009
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