Context
The three poets were active in "swinging" Liverpool at a time when it was a centre of world attention, due to the eruption of The Beatles and the associated bands, known generically as the "Mersey Sound", after which the book is titled.
Phil Bowen in A Gallery to Play To: The Story of the Mersey Poets considers that the poets were as central to their generation as the poets centred around W. H. Auden were to theirs. He distinguishes between them and other contemporary "underground" poets such as Michael Horovitz and Pete Brown, who modelled themselves and their verse forms on the American Beat Generation poets, whereas the Liverpool trio derived their major inspiration from the environment in which they lived. He even suggests that The Mersey Sound might not have been published at all, had it not been for the focus that Liverpool had generated musically.
Read more about this topic: The Mersey Sound (book)
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