Roger McGough – Safety in Numbers, with guest, Stephen Plaice

‘The godfather of modern British poetry’ Metro

‘Brilliantly entertaining…a legend’ Chris Hawkins, BBC Radio 6 Music Presenter

‘The patron saint of poetry’ Carol Ann Duffy

Roger McGough is the author of over a hundred books of poetry for adults and children. Safety in Numbers is his latest collection. Traversing rocky terrain with the assurance of a poetry Rover on Mars, McGough brings down to earth the strangeness of a time on hold. Staycations, adultery in lockdown, ghosts and gamblers, as well as playful advice to up-and-coming poets. (Don’t do it!) With the gift of many tongues, playful, surreal and tender, McGough ‘a trickster you can trust’ reveals the telling moments of our lives.

President of the Poetry Society, he has been honoured with a CBE for services to literature and the Freedom of the City of Liverpool. After Lily The Pink, the Aintree Iron, Scaffold, GRIMMS, The Mersey Sound with Adrian Henri & Brian Patten and his Molière adaptations with English Touring Theatre, Roger presents the long-running Poetry Please. The beat goes on.

‘a true poet who travels deceptively light in what are often the dark places’ T.E.S.

‘A witty and ingenious chronicler of British life with a deftness and agility that is hard to beat’   The Poetry Society 

Stephen Plaice

Stephen Plaice is a poet and dramatist. He is also one of Britain’s leading librettists for opera and music theatre. His productions have been staged throughout Europe. His musical, String, written with the composer Tony Biggin, was premièred in Hailsham in 2021 and returns to the town for further performances this year

As a poet he is very focused on Sussex, where he has lived almost all of his adult life. He was writer-in-residence at HMP Lewes for seven years, so he has seen the county from inside and out. His Selected Poems Those Under Saturn was published in 2018 (Parvenu Press).

Stephen is currently Professor of Dramatic Writing at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

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