Celebrated poet Roger McGough joins a special evening for the Festival of Chichester

Poetry And Music with Roger McGough, also part of the South Downs Poetry Festival, will be in Chichester Cathedral, offering a blend of poetry and music also featuring pianist Elena Toponogova, actress Emily Rose Smith and South Downs poets celebrating the bicentenary of Sussex-born Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

For Roger, the night follows on from the release of his latest collection of poetry last year Safety in Numbers – a title which reflects the fact that there really wasn’t safety in numbers during the pandemic: “My last performance before the lockdown was in Liverpool at a teachers’ conference and it was the day that Liverpool played Atletico Madrid, the game that people said shouldn't happen. The result was more than 30 people died in Liverpool that had been to the game. I remember feeling that there was already the feeling that I shouldn't be doing this talk and when I reached London the tube was full. And if somebody sneezed, you could sense the fear in the air. And that was that and then there was lockdown. And you just retreated. I missed seeing lots of friends and doing gigs but really you just had to get on with it. And I'm not sure that life changed terribly much for a poet during lockdown. Being locked in was not too difficult because it's something that I usually do anyway. I was quite happy to carry on my normal routine. As I say, I missed gigs and performing but in a way that's the least interesting part of what I do as a writer.”

The new collection came out last November and inevitably it touches on the pandemic – the fact that it was safety in numbers no more – “the room starts to fill and I'm out the door.”

“And there are poems about how things have changed. There was always the roar of planes and then suddenly there was stillness and there was no traffic and suddenly you could hear the birds and you could hear the trees talking to each other and that's what you focused on.”

But then as one crisis receded, another one erupted with the war in Ukraine: “You saw the film of real life people in shelters in the Ukraine and it really took me back to my earliest memories as a toddler in Liverpool during the Blitz. Some of the poems come from me looking back to that time in the shelters. When you're a baby or when you're two or three, you don't really pick up on the fear. Your parents are so keen not to let it show. They bear the brunt of it but it must have been awful for them. They just want to protect you as the child and you would just wait there until you get the all-clear.”

“The pandemic certainly also tested people. It brings out what people have. There are those that are going to be on the make, those who see an opportunity to make money but there are also the people that bring the community together,”