Brian Patten

Brian Patten was born in 1946 in Liverpool, and grew up in the docklands. He left school at fifteen, becoming a junior reporter on The Bootle Times, with responsibility for writing the popular music column. He is one of the most accessible and popular poets working today. He made his name in the 1960s in the Liverpool trio with Adrian Henri & Roger McGough. Their main aim was to make poetry immediate and accessible for their audience, and their joint anthology, The Mersey Sound (1967), has been credited as the most significant anthology of the twentieth century for its success in bringing poetry to new audiences. Brian Patten's individual strength is his ability to write and perform a powerful mix of serious and humorous work. His poems have been translated into many languages. Patten is also well-known for his bestselling poetry collections for children, most famously Gargling with Jelly: A Collection of Poems (1985) and Juggling with Gerbils (2000). His collection for children, The Blue and Green Ark: An Alphabet for Planet Earth (1999), won a Cholmondeley Award in 2002. He has also written a novel for children, Mr. Moon's Last Case (1975), which won an award from the Mystery Writers of America Guild. He lives between London and Devon and has been honoured with the Freedom of the City of Liverpool. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Litrature and of both Liverpool University and John Moores University.