Live Poetry poses a dichotomy - the bardic versus the literary tradition - and there are strengths and weaknesses on each side. Last night’s poetry reading at SJE Arts gave an attentive audience the opportunity to consume and digest poetry as the spoken word. I have been a fan of Roger McGough since his early performances in Liverpool with the Scaffold and was interested to hear how his poetry has developed since those days.

The performance opened with readings from the winners of this year’s Oxfordshire young poet competition. Although the competition had a set theme of “roots” there was a very diverse response, from intimate thoughts on a lost father, through concerns for an endangered people right through to Oxfordshire’s fantasy landscape complete with Alice, Caspian and Lyra. For me the most enjoyable performance was Orlando Burrell’s rendition of his poem Tea House but the stand out poem was Claudia Macey-Dare’s poem relating the experience of dementia where she used the power of language and poetic form to realise a fragmented world with great pathos. This, and many of the other words and themes used by the young poets, was reflected in the poetry read by Roger McGough notably “A Fine Romance” also about dementia.

In the time he spoke he covered a gob-smacking range of subjects: Health and Safety, Mobile Phones, Books, Learning to Read Tennis, Top Gear, Recycling, Mermaids and Chips to name but a few. Many of these poems were fixed firmly in the context of his life and experience – “Learning to Read” is about how Roger’s Mother taught him to read from food packaging during rationing, and all these tales are told with charm and wry, dry Scouse humour. Although several of the poems read were very short, the poetic equivalent of one liners, all had great insight and were emotive. For example there was an Ode about the Nissan Leaf which ended with the one liner “turned over a new leaf” to gales of laughter from the audience. McGough also read a number of poems in which he parodied some of his idols – Larkin, Auden, Thomas and Heaney whilst again raising chortles from the audience, particularly with his pastiche of Manley-Hopkins , he showed great insight and understanding of their work and passions.

To conclude the reading McGough tried to explain some of his own view of poems and writing poetry – he feels everyone is born a natural poet and pre-schooling all children rely on their imagination and burgeoning vocabulary to illustrate their world view. The example he gave was a friend’s child passing Didcot power station remarking that they were passing the cloud factory. He feels this is an ability everyone retains but which becomes formulated and constrained through formal education and to illustrate the point that everyone is a poet he read “Moan” but left the last word of each line to the audience. McGough then went on to illustrate this point further by reading “The Way Things Are”. He then explained how he often uses what appears to be a straightforward litany and then likes to subvert this. On this theme he has written a number of poems for Age UK based on the principle of The World’s Wife but actually based on the World’s Husband, writing humorous poems from Mr Nightingale’s and Mr Blyton’s viewpoint.

This wry twist and gentle humour is fundamental to Roger McGough’s work and as this reading illustrated belies a great understanding of words, poetry and the human condition. Ultimately tonight’s performance was a great marriage between the comedian and the wordsmith and clearly demonstrated there is great benefit to be had from live poetry reading.