Celebrate 50 years of The Mersey Sound

The Mersey Sound officially turns 50 on Thursday – and a number of events are planned to mark the date.

Original recordings of the Liverpool poets, Roger McGough, Brian Patten and Adrian Henri, reading from the book will be played during peak commuter times to and from work on the Mersey Ferries.

Meanwhile Liverpool John Moores University’s School of Art and Design will play the recordings during a private view of its students’ Degree Show, also on Thursday, while visitors to the show between May 26 and June 9 will also be able to hear the famous poetry anthology.

Visitors to Tate Liverpool will be able to hear the poems played in the foyer, while fellow waterfront attraction the Danny, the Double Decker Diner at Hartley Quay, and Bold Street-based News from Nowhere, will also play the recordings throughout the day.

And an interview with Roger McGough will be broadcast, along with poems, on Radio Merseyside.

There will be pop up readings on some buses and trains.

The events continue in the evening, when creative writing students from Edge Hill will stage a reading from The Mersey Sound at the Everyman Theatre at 7.30pm. The students will be joined by poets Robert Sheppard and Patricia Farrell.

The anniversary celebrations form part of the Tonight At Noon festival, named after one of Adrian Henri’s poems from the collection, which began in April, curated by Henri’s partner Catherine Marcangeli.

She said: “In the 1960s, the Liverpool Poets performed in a variety of venues - theatres, bars, cafés, but also sometimes in more unexpected places, like buses and public spaces.

“On May 25, the idea is to go back to this sort of “guerrilla poetry”, to surprise people with poems being read live or broadcast through the day and throughout the city.”