by John Welford

Created on: June 29, 2011   Last Updated: July 05, 2011

Roger McGough (born in November 1937) is one of the most popular British poets to have emerged during the 20th century, his poems having an immediate appeal to people across a wide spectrum, including many who would not describe themselves as readers or lovers of poetry. However, despite this popularity, he is also a poet of genuine merit who uses language in innovative ways to express deep feelings and emotions and to get to the heart of a problem or circumstance. “

First Day At School” is an excellent example of such a poem.

He places himself inside the head of a young child who has just been dropped off by his mother in the playground of a city school on his very first day. It is an experience that this reviewer remembers vividly after 54 years, and no doubt the same is true of the vast majority of readers of this poem, which is why they will find themselves having instant rapport with the sentiments expressed by McGough.

The child has clearly been told what to expect, but the words used mean little to him without explanation, and his mother has either not thought this necessary or he has only half understood them. He therefore gets confused and lets his imagination run away with him. Coupled with these strange words and concepts are the experiences of the moment that are also baffling, confusing and slightly scary.

The poem conveys these feelings and emotions very forcefully with its free-verse form in which the three stanzas hang together loosely and the child’s stream of consciousness can ramble on and then be suddenly pulled back as a new thought strikes him.

The very first line expresses childhood exaggeration and wordplay:

“A millionbillionwillion miles from home”

and this is followed by the child’s literal interpretation of what he has been told:

“Waiting for the bell to go. (To go where?)”

He now becomes aware of something scary in the form of other, older, children:

“Why are they all so big, other children?
So noisy? So much at home they
Must have been born in uniform.”

He immediately sees them as something alien and not like him. They also display alienation towards him in that they must have:

“Spent the years inventing games
That don't let me in. Games
That are rough, that swallow you up.”

McGough, who was a schoolteacher in the 1960s, is aware that, to a 5-year-old child, a 6-year-old is a potential threat, and that any child who is not in their first year at any school will

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