Sporting relations

by Roger McGough

New hardcover with unclipped dust jacket, in shrink wrap. LW

Genres: Poetry

71 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1974

Reviews

[Daniel · Rating 2 out of 5]

When someone is described as the people's poet laureate I fear the worst and with grim inevitability know that I will shortly be thinking a little less of the people. This short collection serves no purpose. Most of the poems are feeble set ups for uninspired puns (on his way to the hostel/he stops and he buys/a carton of milk/and two meat pies/then it's ole to bed/and ole to rise). But that's fine. Maybe it's just me. I rarely like a pun. Oh right the words sound the same but have two different meanings. Ha-de-ha.

But I can suffer bad puns in near silence, if, if there's something else. In this collection, there isn't though. No sense of place or time or people, and for a collection about relations it's oddly empty. Just blank verse that happens to rhyme.

[Peter Longden · Rating 5 out of 5]

A laugh out loud sporting collection from the Liverpool poetry king (my opinion!) with excellent illustrations too.

[Coenraad · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some might wish that poetry would always be this much fun. McGough has the most uncanny way of jangling the meaning of words and use it in unexpected ways - that make perfect sense, although nobody has thought of it in that way before. He writes about (imaginary) family members and their sporting exploits. There is just about a laugh on every page, often because of the unexpectedness of the language. My favourite remains Aunty Dora and her diving. Her poem starts as follows:

A grandpiano of a woman is Aunty Dora.
Limbering on the 60-metre board
she throws the pool into shadow.

From there it just gets better. Cousin Wystan the train-spotter, Uncle Jack the very cross country-runner, Terry and Pancho as a tennis doubles team, Aunty Ann the anti-angler, and Aunt Agatha, who was blooded at five - a brief look at some of the set of sporting relations in McGough's poetic life, and now ours too, for which we have to thank him.

And then Cousin Daisy:

Cousin Daisy's
favourite sport
was standing
on streetcorners.

She contracted
with ease
a funny disease.
Notwithstanding.

That just about says it all.

Roger McGough buit woorde en hul verskuilde betekenisse uit soos min hom kan nadoen. Sy verse is dikwels hoogs amusant, juis weens die verrassings wat hy in sy taalgebruik inbou. Ag, was die digkuns tog altyd soveel pret!