The Mersey Sound (book)

The Mersey Sound is an anthology of poems by Liverpool poets Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Adrian Henri first published in 1967, when it launched the poets into "considerable acclaim and critical fame". It went on to sell over 500,000 copies, becoming one of the bestselling poetry anthologies of all time. The poems are characterised by "accessibility, relevance and lack of pretension", as well as humour, liveliness and at times melancholy. The book was, and continues to be, widely influential with its direct and often witty language, urban references such as plastic daffodils and bus conductors, and frank, but sensitive (and sometimes romantic) depictions of intimacy.

The Mersey Sound is number 10 in a series of slim paperbacks originally published in the 1960s by Penguin in a series called Penguin Modern Poets. Each book assembled work by three compatible poets. Number 6, for example, contained poems by George Macbeth, Edward Lucie-Smith and Jack Clemo. The other books in the series were not given a specific title.

The first edition of The Mersey Sound contains 128 pages, the half-title page being number 1. Henri is first with 44 pages (30 poems), then McGough with 32 pages (24 poems) and Patten with 31 pages (26 poems).

A "revised and expanded" edition was published in 1974, with a cover showing an electric guitar and a total of 152 pages. Like the first edition, this second edition is now available only as a second-hand item.

Another revised edition came out in 1983, by which time more than 250,000 copies of the two previous editions had been sold. The third edition has "Revised Edition" as a subtitle, but on the cover only, with a photograph of the three poets taken by Dmitri Kasterine. Extra poems, such as Henri's "The Entry of Christ into Liverpool," helped to take the total number of pages to 160, but some of the reprinted poems had been revised in the meantime, and some were omitted, such as McGough's "Why Patriots Are a Bit Nuts In the Head". The blurb mentions the revisions, but there is no explanation for the omissions. There was also the addition of short biographies of each poet.

Another book in the same format, and with complementary graphics, was also published in 1983, titled New Volume and with all new poems by each poet, and the same biographies as in the revised edition. Again the space is weighted in favour of Henri, at 57 pages, with McGough having 33 pages and Patten 35 pages, though they each have two more poems included than Henri, whose section includes longer sequences such as "From 'Autobiography'".

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