HOWZAT

Dad doesn’t cook, doesn’t drive, and doesn’t have many hobbies other than writing. My mum is quite a feisty character and she definitely wears the trousers in the house. She pays all the bills, does all the cooking and shopping, and makes sure that everything to do with the running of the house is organised so that Dad can just get on with his poetry, because when Dad’s writing he’s in his own little bubble. I don’t think he could ever do something like learn to drive. He’s too occupied with thoughts about writing. He couldn’t drive and have ideas at the same time; he’d probably crash.

I don’t think Dad has a typical “poet’s life”. It’s a real misconception these days that poets lead some reckless, bohemian lifestyle.

Dad has quite a normal, 9-to-5 existence. He’ll wake up after I’ve gone to art college, work, have a cup of tea, work some more, have his dinner, go to the pub and come back home and carry on working until about 11 at night. It’s a pretty normal working day.

He has such a huge mind, and poems are always coming out of it, so he’s constantly thinking about something and won’t be happy until he’s got his thoughts scribbled down. We might be watching EastEnders together and he’ll suddenly rush upstairs to write about something that’s just come into his head. Or we’ll be at the dinner table talking about something completely unrelated and he’ll suddenly start speaking to us about a poem. I used to be really interested in typography and it was great having Dad around because I could ask him for ideas, and he’d write me out little poems to use in my work. His knowledge of poetry is amazing, and he can write a poem about almost anything.

In the past year I’ve started to pick up and read Dad’s poems for the first time, and I’m always surprised at how good they are. It’s quite sad reading them, though. A lot of them are about long-lost first loves and regrets from his youth. Sometimes it feels like I’m reading his diary, so I don’t like to talk to him about it too much because I think I’d find it a little bit embarrassing.

None of my friends really knew who my dad was when I was growing up. One time I was in drama class at school and we had to work on a poem written by Dad. We had to write an essay about the author and to interpret what he was saying in the poem, so I just got him to do it. But the teacher interpreted the poem in a completely different way to my dad, who wrote it, so I didn’t get a very good mark!

Because I’ve seen my dad make a living from doing something creative, I want to do the same. The thought of being stuck on the Tube in rush hour, surrounded by old men in pinstriped suits — that scares me. We’ve not really spoken about career plans yet and Dad’s quite relaxed about it: he says if you’re passionate enough about something, you’ll find a way of doing it for a living. I used to think having an older dad was kind of weird, but I’m comfortable with it now. Dad’s inspiring. I’ve

seen him make so much from his life. He’s worked so hard to make a career out of poetry, a complex and intelligent subject, but when you speak to him you realise how normal he is. He’s still just a docker’s son from Liverpool.

- Roger McGough’s new collection of poems, That Awkward Age (Viking, £12.99), is out on June 25

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