'Touching your soul'

 

“If I do a poetry reading I want people to walk out and say they feel better for having been there – not because you’ve done a comedy performance but because you’re talking about your father dying or having young children, things that touch your soul.” – Roger McGough

 

Born in Liverpool, England in 1937 McGough started on the road to writing success in the 1950s with his best-selling The Mersey Sound.   Since then he’s had a highly successful career as a performance poet, children’s author and playwright.  A broadcaster, too, he long hosted the BBC’s “Poetry Please.”   For Saturday’s Poem, here is McGough’s,

 

                          Sleeping In

Our street is dead lazy
Especially in winter.
Some mornings you wake up
And it’s still lying there
Saying nothing.  Huddled
under its white counterpane.

But soon the lorries arrive
Like angry Mums,
Pull back the blankets
And send it shivering
Off to work.