Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A poet whose witty colloquial style gave his work wide appeal; in the sixties he formed The Scaffold and wrote their number one 'Lily the Pink', and has over th
On the island
Eight records
I'd like to have in memory of my mum and dad.
The Choir of the Abbey of Saint-Pierre de Solesmes
going back to my days at school as an altar boy, and I used to be enjoy the Latin Mass, and uh I'd like a Gregorian chant
one of the reasons Good exciting as well by poetry was actually listening to poetry. Listening to Dylan Thomas.
Pavane pour une infante défunte
I loved Ravel's Pavan for a Dead Princess. When I heard it at university first time, and I was very moved, and have been when I hear I hear it
it was the time when the Beatles' first record got into the into the charts, Love Me Do. Going back to what we said before, when everything could be an American and uh we'd taken our culture from elsewhere, now we were able to do it ourselves
I used to like modern jazz in my beatnik days... in the evening we had a residency at Ronnie Scott's. Where we were on with Stan Goetz.
I love the musical Blood Brothers, so I'd like to hear Barbara Dixon singing Marilyn Munro.
Foghorns on the MerseyFavourite
I'm in bed. And I'm young. Uh basically small and snuggled up under the uh counterpane. I can hear these noises outside coming across from the river, from the River Mersey.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:29Is that your definition of a proper poet, Roger? Somebody who says things that make you think and says them nicely?
I think it would be, yes. That's the sort of um poetry that I like. I mean, poetry is a mystery to me still, but um I like something that's accessible.
Presenter asks
2:44Slightly disparaging tag to it, isn't there, that you're a pop poet or you're a beat poet, but you're not actually quite proper. I mean, do you resent that?
I do resent it, and it's been used that people use it now. You're a performance poet, meaning I don't know quite what it means. I think it means you're not quite a poet, or that you write for performance only. And it's not true. I've always Written all my life trying to make sense of my own life and and I love language and I love words, I'm trying to write poems all the time and um just trying to be myself as well.
Presenter asks
6:24Tell me about the family describe it to me. What kind of family was it?
Um it was a Liverpool Irish family. Um my father's one of seven brothers and a sister and uh my mother's side, there were twelve, and they're mainly aunties. Uh that was a lot more fun. So it was all woodbines and boogie woogie kind of things. Um and that and very loving. Um working class Catholic family.
The keepsakes
The book
I do like stars and a chance to rechristen all the planets and stars, after people I know and love.
The luxury
Well, you know how you never get a cab when you need one? Well, I thought perhaps a a black cab might be nice. And then I could I don't drive, as a matter of fact, and so I could learn to drive, do the knowledge on the island. And then, um, once the petrol had run out, I could live in it, and perhaps in the evening with the as the sun goes down, a pina collard in one hand, listening to sailing by and the shipping forecast, count my lucky stars.
Presenter asks
10:27Tell me about then when you got to Hull University. What happened that to open your ears and your mind to poetry?
It was very sudden. I think I said at At school it'd be very much doing the doing the work and doing the work and not much intellectual debate and they just do the work. Get the sums right, get the word get to university. And I was very young, I was seventeen, going on fifteen when I went to university, and it was there that There was intellectual debate. There were intellectuals. There were people around that I was opened up to ideas I never had before. And often through the French, in fact, through Coming across Rambeau, de Naval, Vient, these sort of people. And just this great excitement, and I just started writing. And um it never stopped in a sense once.
Presenter asks
27:03Have you then, Roger, unusually been able to make a living as a poet?
Yes, yes I did. And it probably as a result of having made my name with the scaffold, it certainly made life easier for me because people knew who I was. And so this was a help to me.
“instead of like taking a mirror and showing it to the sky, you bring it down and show it around you. And that's the the starting point.”
“I decided that I as I was writing poetry I must be a poet, and that whatever happened in my life What if my job was and I didn't think it would be to do with poetry, that I would be a poet. That was my vocation anyway.”
“The best thing about being famous is when you walk down the street and people turn round to look at you and bump into things.”