News at Eleven: It still irritates him that he and his new generation

of Mersey Sound poets who presented a new, vernacular poetry to the nation were disparaged by the self-appointed high priests of the art in the 1970s who ran the influential magazine, Poetry Review.

This group, with Andrew Motion, Blake Morrison and Craig Raine prominent among them, were attempting to identify a canon for postwar British verse. When a "league table" of top poets put him in the bottom of the second division, he didn't lash out, but it still clearly galls.

from The Independent: Older, wiser, angrier: Roger McGough settles some old scores

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