The Failed Idealist’s Guide to the Tatty Truth by Fergus McGonigal

Fergus McGonigal takes Ogden Nash’s notion of a poem being an essay which rhymes and targets the unsentimental truth about parenthood, pseudo-intellectual pretentiousness and pomposity, and what happens when the idealism of youth has given way to the disappointment of middle-age. As you would expect of a slam veteran, Fergus’s poems are comic entertainments but beneath the manic laughter there always lies a grain of familiar truth.

‘Fergus McGonigal reaches the parts which other
poets cannot reach’
CHELTENHAM POETRY FESTIVAL

‘Bold, brash and brilliant!’
WORCESTER LITFEST AND FRINGE

‘Vibrant, wild and funny, and that’s just his hair.
Fergus McGonigal is a poet and performer of verve, energy
and pizzaz. Shame he can’t spell his name properly.’
ELVIS MCGONAGALL