Roger McGough, Gregory Woods & Georgina Wilding

Hilarious and surreal, McGough is a poet of many voices. His latest book It Never Rains is a collection of new verses with drawings by the author. President of the Poetry Society, he has been honoured with a CBE for services to literature and the Freedom of the City of Liverpool. He presents the long-running Poetry Please. This event’s first half hour will feature special guests Henry Normal,  Georgina Wilding and Gregory Woods

“The patron saint of poetry’ Carol Ann Duffy

‘Liverpool’s own Poet Laureate’ Daily Post

‘rueful, unpredictable observation to please the sharpest wits’ The Independent

Gregory Woods is Emeritus Professor of Gay and Lesbian Studies at Nottingham Trent University. His main academic books are with Yale University Press, the latest being Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World (2017). He has published five poetry collections with Carcanet Press, the latest being Quidnunc (2007) and An Ordinary Dog (2011). He also has poetry chapbooks with Shoestring Press (Nottingham) and Sow’s Ear Press (Derby). Peter Porter called him “The poet with the sharpest technique for social verse in Britain today”. 

Georgina is Nottingham’s Young Poet Laureate. Born and bred in Nottingham. She grew up in a working-class family with Irish Catholic roots and is one of 13 grandchildren. Her current work in poetry has a focus on gender and expression. Alongside this, she is the founding editor of Nottingham based poetry publishing house, Mud Press, which recently saw the launch of their newest anthology WOMAN.
She has been commissioned by organisations such as the BBC to write and perform for both radio and TV, has toured her poetry across the UK and Germany, and recently performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She has a first-class degree in Creative and Professional Writing from the University of Nottingham, and began her career in poetry working within the Nottingham-based spoken word collective, Mouthy Poets.