Holiday on Death Row McGough, Roger

Roger McGough — Liverpool poet, wit, founding member of The Scaffold — turns his lens on mortality with the sharp eye and dark humor he's known for. These poems walk the line between the absurd and the achingly real: hospital wards, aging, grief, the small violences of everyday life. McGough never gets maudlin. Instead, he finds the joke in the darkness, the tenderness in the mundane. A man watches his reflection age. A couple argues in a supermarket. Death lurks but so does life, messy and stubborn. The wordplay is playful, the observations razor-sharp. For fans of Larkin's honesty or Patten's warmth, but with McGough's unmistakable Scouse irreverence. A slim volume that punches above its weight.