With praise such as “the patron saint of poetry” and “Liverpool’s poet laureate,” I was nervous about speaking with the poet Roger McGough, whose uproariously funny and moving poetry has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. This only increased when McGough told me he’d recently turned down a request to complete a festival tour to Singapore and Bahrain, because he didn’t feel like travelling. “I now get to be pickier in what I do,” he smiles, “and I need to make space for writing – I’ll publish work only when I’m ready.” But it’s alright: it seems he’s given himself time to talk to me.

Roger McGough is an integral part of Britain’s poetry scene. Moving from initial involvement in the so-called ‘Merseybeat’ to international prominence, and contributor of the famed The Mersey Sound poetry collection that propelled his work to the world’s stage, he’s done things as diverse as form part of musical trio The Scaff old to regularly hosting Radio 4’s Poetry Please programme; not to mention a plethora of highly-praised children’s and adult’s poetry collections. Whilst discussing his new collection, Poetry Pie, McGough stresses how the poetry is for both adults and children. “I’m not deliberately trying to be accessible – it’s the only way I can write.” Somewhat poetically, it
wasn’t his education but whilst as a teacher in Liverpool that McGough found his inspiration for writing: only after receiving encouragement from his pupils when he was reading his poetry did McGough began to consider becoming a poet. “I felt the need to write, so I did,” he tells me. When asked whether it took years to perfect, he informs me that there’s nothing intentionally difficult about writing poetry: “everybody should try it, it’s for everyone. So I
always write for everyone.”

Unfortunately, others haven’t always agreed with McGough. He is unhappy at being pigeonholed as an ‘upbeat poet,’ sometimes being sidelined as writing for the masses. “It’s too easy to be labelled”, McGough says. When called a ‘pop poet,’ people immediately link him to Pop Art whilst in reality, his poems can be used in any context. One only needs to look at the use of his work in his band The Scaffold to see that. “In the past being a ‘Liverpool poet’ was a put down, you were not to be trusted”, McGough says. He admits he’s enjoyed helping to put Liverpool on the map through his distinctive work, “though it always spoke for itself.” So surely that worry of being put down has diminished after all this time? The fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and President of the Poetry Society chuckles. “What people think always matters.” When we talk about the reasons for his most recent book, McGough’s voice becomes more animated.

It’s really important to keep writing for children, he says. There is worryingly little money in poetry books for publishers, especially ones for the younger generation, meaning fewer are published. McGough’s new book Poetry Pie is an attempt to rectify this, “it’s vital to inspire young poets as well as to entertain others.” McGough wants to use his poetry to make people laugh, and to reassure people around him: “poetry can be a hug.” And what about bigger global issues? McGough hasn’t written anything about Syria or migration yet. He doesn’t see it as his place to write ‘worried poems’ as he wants to be more positive about the world, a view which he suggests may stem from his strong Catholic faith. “I don’t want to spread my perception and create lots of mini McGoughs – we’re all individuals.” 

But does this mean McGough fi nds it difficult to write serious poetry? McGough has admitted it took time for this to happen, meaning his later work is more personal. Now, with age, his work can be “more focused on darkness,” spending longer on poems and wanting to keep them for longer before publishing. This style change, like his humorous, ingenious take on the everyday world, has in his words “just happened.” McGough believes our attitude to the world shapes our own unique voices, using different forms and shaping new types of poetry. This can clearly be seen in his collection Everyday Eclipses, which focuses in on everyday events. “More people should take up this outlook,” I’m told, as it forces introspection. And this focus on the details of writing is important. Despite his versatile and commanding stage presence, McGough doesn’t like looking at himself performing. The words keep him grounded in an art where the writing is always more important than the performing. “Some poets want to be songwriters. Not me.”

Despite his wide span of work, and the fame this has brought him, Roger McGough sees himself simply as a poet. “I live in a world of poetry, so I see it everywhere.” And the wry humour and sideways look on life he is known for is still as active as ever. When asked whether he wanted to be remembered as part of the trail of great poets, he responds “depending who the others are, of course!” Despite never going out searching for glory, McGough lets himself enjoy the luxuries it brings. “I get to do more work, I can pick which commissions I want. I just love the intensity of writing the poems!” This enthusiasm for creation perhaps sums up McGough’s sparkling work. He does not want to be defined as any particular type of writer just a poet that makes us smile. “Of course, I’m not looking forward to being a ‘late poet,’” he laughs. I unconsciously grin. McGough has that effect on people.

It should be considered as good a badge of greatness as any in the music industry to fill the Royal Albert Hall at 74 years old, and leave the punters begging for a second encore. The adoration and admiration that Bob Dylan still inspires in fans of all ages is unlike almost any other performer in the world. On Sunday night, I could see clearly why that is.

If you have heard 2015’s Bob Dylan perform, or you plan on doing so at some point, you should know that he’s a different man from 1967’s Bob Dylan. His voice has not aged well. The inimitable strains of the classic recordings are gone, replaced by something rougher and weaker. He hurries his lines, dispensing with the poise and measure that characterised his younger sound.

In spite of this, I expect the night didn’t (indeed, won’t) disappoint you. Even if his voice is a shadow of what it used to be, his choice of supporting musicians is not. While Dylan himself drew every eye, their understated class perfectly propped up his vocals.

Before the show began, not having looked up Dylan’s recent set lists, I was hoping his older material would hold its own in the running order, fearing it would lose out to his more recent work. What he delivered was a seamless blend of old and new, sliding to and fro between the decades. Highlights included ‘She Belongs to Me’ and ‘High Water (for Charley Patton)’, as well as several covers of older tracks like ‘Autumn Leaves’.

For most Dylan fans, expectations will centre on generation-defining ballads like ‘Mr Tambourine Man’ and ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, neither of which, I regret to report, were heard. However, hearing ‘Things Have Changed’ and ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’ from the mouth of their maker was exactly the quasi-religious experience I had hoped it would be. Remarkably, the size of the Royal Albert Hall detracted nothing from the intimacy of Dylan’s murmured rendition of Frank Sinatra’s ‘I’m a Fool to Want You’.

The show highlighted how Dylan, in his advanced years, has managed to remain, if not relevant, at least current. Through his so-called ‘Never Ending Tour’ (his series of nearly consecutive tours that began in 1988) and his regular new album releases, he has refused to retreat to the background. Tempest (2012) is far from the level of Bringing It All Back Home (1965), but it was still judged by Rolling Stone writers the fourth best album of 2012. It may be hard to believe, but even at 74, Dylan’s shows are worth every penny of their hefty ticket prices.

I guess you really should never meet your heroes. Darwin Deez, with his baggy jumpers, awkward dance moves and tendrils of curly hair, was my high school hero. Me and my best friend Nancy used to skip out of school early back in the heyday of 2010 to get on the London Midland and see his band play our favourite songs. We wore kooky outfits and snuck into the afterparties of Brick Lane bars. We got things signed.

Five years later, in the green room of the O2, he seemed tired, or maybe a bit sickly. Words came out slow, and his conversational skills were a little awkward. We rattled out the regular interview questions that we had scrawled down on the way there – asking about the meaning of lyrics, the feeling of fame, the artistic process. We wanted to talk to the guy who sang to us at 15 about not feeling quite right; about sitting on the ocean floor and feeling super bored.

We both realised, though, that after a nonsensical, and also rather dull, description of a memory game that he plays on his time off, and then an inexplicably long biography of an author he used to like, that Darwin Deez is actually just soulsick. He complained that he wasn’t ‘inspired’ by anything at the moment – that nothing made him feel like dancing (not even Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling’) – that girls made him bored after two years, that he was losing money on the tour and didn’t want to invest too much in it.

He was bitter about no-one buying his concept album, and resentful towards his fans for wanting indie pop bangers that they could sing along to instead of atonal abstraction. He walked out without saying goodbye, and Nancy reminded me that the last time we saw him live, he hung around for ages after his set, just perched on the edge of the stage, smiling genially and giving out hugs like they were going out of fashion.

Walking into the gig later on, we stood out like a couple of sore thumbs as we were neither 15 nor bizarre stragglers in our forties – the two demographics of which the audience seemed to consist.

Undeniably, the 15 year-olds were having a great time, while the forty-somethings were touching each other and dancing inappropriately (imagine a bear trying to shake a tree for coconuts, but the tree is a lady and this is all set to a soundtrack of ‘Radar Detector’). His trilling, plucky notes rang hollow, even though the long, self-involved guitar solos were the only times he seemed like he was enjoying himself.

So, if you want to see what the afterparty of 2010’s indie pop heyday looks like, go search out a Darwin Deez concert. He’ll still be slowly singing “I’m just wasting time away, I’m just wasting time in space”, and you’ll agree.

The 2015 Oxford Lieder Festival has drawn to a close following two busy weeks of concerts, readings, study days, masterclasses, and more. In contrast with last year’s ‘The Schubert Project’, which featured the performance of Schubert’s entire song output, this year’s festival theme was ‘Singing Words: Poets and their Songs’.

The festival’s opening concert was held in the Sheldonian Theatre, which has a much greater audience capacity and a very different acoustic to the more intimate Holywell Music Room, where the festival is based. Sarah Connolly’s voice certainly filled the theatre, as did her inimitable stage presence. The first half comprised popular Schubert songs such as ‘Die junge Nonne’, and was at once dramatic, subtle, and charming, and the post-interval selection of Wolf and Brahms prompted both tears and cheers from the audience.

In addition to the Sheldonian, concerts and events have been held in venues across Oxford, including the Jacqueline du Pré Building at St Hilda’s, the Oxford Martin School, Iffley Road’s St John the Evangelist, and even the Ashmolean and Blackwell’s. New College Ante-Chapel was used for a series of late-night concerts, providing a suitably atmospheric venue for both Imogen Cooper’s all-Chopin recital and a candlelit, haunting programme of contemporary music, including George Crumb’s Apparition, from the exciting young duo Sophie Junker and Deirdre Brenner—a suitably spooky occasion for late October.

Vaults and Gardens Café was also transformed into a late-night concert venue, taking on a warm and vibrant tavern-like feel to host the Schubert-folk-rock group The Erlkings. With drinks being served and a large student turnout in addition to the festival’s slightly older regular audience, the group’s clever and funny adaptations of Schubert favourites allowed for a fitting celebration of the festival’s opening weekend.

Nonetheless, the hub of the festival is the Holywell—a perfect venue for lieder recitals despite occasional sonic interruptions from motorbikes, bells, and people outside. The intensity of the atmosphere that grips the audience as they wait for a much-anticipated duo to take to the stage is difficult to capture in words. Perhaps the best example of this was Wolfgang Holzmair and Imogen Cooper’s programme of Clara Schumann, Frank Martin, and Robert Schumann on Friday 23^rd. Holzmair and Cooper have been performing pieces such as Schumann’s Kerner-Lieder together for over 20 years, and their onstage dynamic did not disappoint. Such was the emotional intensity that it felt like the entire audience held their breath from the opening chords of ‘Stille Tränen’ until the end of a prolonged silence that followed the final song’s closure. The ovation they received was so enthusiastic that they couldn’t retire without offering two encores: first Clara Schumann’s ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’, a gently elegiac setting of Rückert’s meditation on love, and finally a favourite from Robert Schumann’s Liederkreis Op. 39, ‘Mondnacht’, to round off the evening.

Waiting for an encore is always exciting, and the choices from this year’s performers did not disappoint. Clara Schumann was also chosen for Sarah Connolly’s closing song—a gesture appreciated by those aware of the inevitable gender imbalance of the festival programme’s poets and composers (that said, the premiere of Rhian Samuel’s ‘Wildflower Songbook’ later in the festival marked another occasion to celebrate women composers). Elizabeth Watts and Julius Drake tied together a wonderful recital of Liszt and Debussy settings of Victor Hugo and Paul Verlaine with a short, intense Wagner number, and Joan Rodgers gave a charming introduction to her encore—Tchaikovsky’s ‘The Fearful Moment’—that encapsulated some of the evening’s poetic themes: love and fear.

Alongside song recitals, the festival has featured a number of chamber music concerts. The Doric Quartet returned this year to perform two staples of Romantic chamber repertoire: Schumann’s A minor quartet in the Oxford Martin School, and Brahms’s quintet with pianist Alasdair Beatson. Both of these concerts received a warm reception, and the Schumann was appreciated by a much wider audience as it was live-streamed on YouTube. 

To complement the lunchtime performances of Fauré songs that ran throughout the festival, there were also afternoon concerts of his chamber music. The C minor piano quartet was performed by an ensemble of acclaimed younger musicians: Tom Poster (piano), Magnus Johnston (violin), Timothy Ridout (viola) and Guy Johnston (cello) sustained a remarkable level of energy in a performance that brought out the exuberance of Fauré’s chamber textures. The Phoenix Piano Trio complemented their lyrical performance of Fauré’s trio with an arrangement of Janáček’s first string quartet—a version that, while performed with suitable intensity, seemed jarring in its replacement of the all-important inner string parts by piano.

The festival also runs a number of study days. This year, events were focussed variously on the interaction of music and words in song, songs in translation, and Berlioz. Highlights included a paper from Wadham fellow Philip Ross Bullock on the cultural context of Sappho’s poetry in early 20^th century Russian songs, and St Catz fellow Laura Tunbridge gave an engaging and amusing critical history of song performed in translation. With a very mixed audience, the study days succeeded in providing something for everyone.

Huge thanks go to Artistic Director Sholto Kynoch, Administrator Taya Smith, the festival assistants and the rest of the Lieder Festival team for facilitating such a wonderful two weeks of music; here’s to an equally successful Schumann-themed festival next year.

The year 1669 is a bawdy and troublesome time. Theatres have just reopened after seventeen years of Puritan oppression. There is a surge in dramatic writing and the first English actresses appear on stage. Party animal King Charles is sat on the throne, and Nell Gwyn wants to act. Over coffee in the Pembroke café, the lovely Charlotte Vickers, director, tells me about Playhouse Creatures.

Playhouse Creatures follows the story of Nell Gwyn, one of five women in the play who work their way onto the theatrical scene in the Restoration period. Based, for the most part, on real lives, each actress brings her own background and storyline to the theatre where they work. The play explores how Restoration actresses try to get power in a world that is set against them.

Playhouse Creatures brings to mind the problems women faced in theatre four hundred years ago, and that which women in current theatre still face. “It’s been interesting,” Charlotte says, “for everyone to think about what problems are still faced by women in theatre, as well as what has changed and what we have now got right.” Although the cast of five is composed entirely of women, there remains several invisible and anonymous male figures in the play, including a ‘director’, the patriarch whom the girls discuss and converse with. The storylines of the characters are relatively separate, nor is there much room for friendship in this competitive sphere, but there are moments when the five women band together, a force of good old girl power in the face of the invisible man and the invisible world. The play also discusses the meaning of theatre itself; we must question why we attend theatre, and why it is important.

Head to the Burton Taylor Studio in 4th week for what promises to be ninety minutes of uniquely amusing, powerful and thought provoking drama. Full of dramatic allusion and meta-theatre, Playhouse Creatures provides a moving and often comic account of the precarious lives of Restoration actresses.