9. In 1967, Penguin published The Mersey Sound, with three Pop poets – Henri, McGough, Patten. It sold a million copies. This was the perfect Pop book. Teenagers read it. It was the culmination of something probably 5 to 8 years old by then. It was a forgettable book. Pop culture is immediate, cutaneous, once-only. If you think about it, or discuss it reflexively, you destroy it. Because it evaporates, it is hard for a person to fix the history of it. I think that what Evans says about it is very bad history. But also – this kind of poetry does not sustain discussion between intelligent people, and that is what we are going to do, we must do it willy-nilly.
