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Brian Patten met Roger McGough and Adrian Henri in Liverpool in 1961. Michael Horovitz described the emergence of the Beatles around 1963 as somewhat related to the three men, whom he considered pop poetry. In early 1962, cub-reporter Patten included early articles on Henri and McGough in the Bootle Times and started a magazine called Underdog, which ran until 1966. The Merseyside Arts Festival, first held in August 1962, was inspired by the South Liverpool Festival of Art that took place two years earlier. Henri and McGough seemed natural choices as committee members for the festival, but not John Gorman. In 1963, Horovitz invited McGough to read at the Cellars Club as part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The place would become a fixture in the careers of the Mersey Poets and many of their subsequent associates. The Mersey Poets opened Sampson & Barlow's, which held poetry readings until 1964 and was visited by the world-renowned Black Mountain poet Robert Creeley. An unlikely supporter of the Mersey Poets was Edward Lucie-Smith.

The 1960s has been characterised as the best years for the Mersey Poets. By January 1970, things had changed. The Beatles disbanded and a Conservative government led by Edward Heath assumed power in Britain. John Lennon downplayed the years of change and counter-cultural rebellion, a sentiment shared by Brian Patten. Roger McGough also viewed 1970 as incomplete, while Adrian Henri, an atheist, saw good things at the beginning of the new decade. In March 1973 Philip Larkin created controversy after The Oxford Book of Twentieth Century English Verse, an anthology of poems of which he was editor, came out. One of the issues was the inclusion of Patten in the anthology. Between 1972 and 1975, the Mersey Poets were involved in a series of small tours, publications, residencies, and events. Patten attended the ‘Poetry Gala’ at the Royal Festival Hall in February 1969 with Christopher Logue, Basil Bunting, Ted Hughes, and Stevie Smith.

Seaforth, an arid suburban plain in Liverpool that spreads monotonously along Bridge Road, less than a mile north of Bootle, is the birthplace of Roger McGough, whose early memories were the sounds of tugs' foghorns on the Mersey. McGough attended St Mary's Prep School and received a scholarship to St Mary's Grammar School, an institution whose alumni include Kevin McNamara, John Birt, and Laurie Taylor. During his stay at the grammar school, he undertook elocution lessons arranged by his mother, Mary McGough, in an attempt to cure his habit of talking too quickly. The young McGough was an avid reader and always near the top of the class. In 1958 he attended his first poetry reading courtesy of an established poet by the name of Christopher Logue, who would have a profound impact on his life.

Three decades after the publication of The Mersey Sound – a turning point in British poetry – the Mersey Poets remained visible on the literary scene. The beginning of the 1990s saw Brian Patten publish Thawing Frozen Frogs, a follow-up to Gargling With Jelly. He would later come up with The Puffin Book of Twentieth-Century Children's Verse and two other children's books, Grizzelda Frizzle and Other Stories and The Magic Bicycle. In 1992, Penguin published Roger McGough's You at the Back; a companion, Selected Poems, and Defying Gravity. McGough also wrote a children's book, An Imaginary Menagerie, and was asked by Adrian Forsyth to become chairman of Chelsea Arts Club. However, he chose to join the Council of the Poetry Society upon the invitation of Carol Ann Duffy. For his part, Adrian Henri was commissioned to write a poem entitled ‘Winter Ending’ for the Labour Party's next manifesto.

In his late sixties, Adrian Henri was complaining of chest pains. In 1999 he had to stay in the Royal Liverpool Hospital for several weeks after his right side was paralysed. The following year Catherine Marcangeli organised a benefit for Henri at Philharmonic Hall, attended by Roger McGough, Brian Patten, and other members of his artistic family. Henri wrote one of his last poems, ‘Coronary Care Unit’, before he finally succumbed on December 21, 2000. During that time, Patten had been working on The Story Giant, a book of ghost stories, fables, and morality tales for children and adults. A month after the Labour Party won the 2001 elections, the Mersey Poets were granted the freedom of the city of Liverpool. In 2005, McGough published his autobiography. In October 2007, he and Patten began their 40-Love tour in Cardiff, highlighted by two shows at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool. The Mersey Poets made their mark in British poetry by talking straight, shooting clean from the hip, and playing to the gallery.

In December 1980, John Lennon was shot outside his New York apartment by Mark David Chapman. In Liverpool, more than 30,000 people, shocked by the news, trooped to St George's Hall. That same year, Brian Patten was working on a book about the poet John Clare and preparing a selection of his own widely acclaimed love poems. Roger McGough, for his part, was in London editing an anthology of poems for teenagers called Strictly Private. In 1981, he was invited to Germany for a reading tour with Adrian Henri and Andy Roberts. Patten was not with them because he declined the invitation. In 1983, Henri wrote a poem for a John Lennon Memorial Concert, entitled ‘New York City Blues’, while Penguin released New Volume, a follow-up to The Mersey Sound. Featuring a strong selection of recent poetry by the Mersey Poets, New Volume made little noise.

In 1968, the Mersey Poets were often compared with one another. Roger McGough had become a regular on ABC's The Eleventh Hour and was performing numerous gigs with the Scaffold band. In a poem dedicated to Bob Kane and local band the Almost Blues, he brought out Adrian Mitchell and the spirit of the counter-culture. Concluding Adrian Henri's Love Night at the Everyman, the poem became the ‘Bat-Rave’ featuring everyone concerned and eventually led to the first gig for the Liverpool Scene. Whereas Brian Patten kept his ‘Little Johnny’ poems separate, Henri used everything published in The Mersey Sound to come up with his own book, Tonight At Noon. Published in 1968 by Rapp & Whiting, it established him as a force to be reckoned with in British poetry.

This book focuses on the literary and social identity of Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten – also known as the Mersey Poets – whose work was considered irreverent and sardonic, and occupied a central niche in twentieth-century British poetry, symbolising the pop poetry movement of the period. The Mersey Poets first shot to prominence in 1967, when Tony Richardson of Penguin Books featured them in the highly prestigious Penguin Modern Poets series. The book, titled The Mersey Sound would be a big break for the three Liverpool poets. They had distinct and widely differing achievements: McGough was known for his economy, edge, and unblinkered concerns; Henri for his preserving benevolence; and Patten for his straight-talking, sheer metaphysical charge.

During the 1950s, Liverpool 8 was the only destination other than Soho for aspiring poets, painters, musicians, bohemians, or ‘bon viveur’ on a tight budget. Unlike Soho, it was devoid of clip-joints, nightclubs, or pubs. This is where Adrian Henry met his future wife Joyce Wilson, whom he married in 1957 while he was employed at the Liverpool Playhouse as a scenic artist. Only two miles north of the burgeoning bohemia of Liverpool 8, Roger McGough was feeling restless in Litherland. Like Henri before him, he found himself increasingly drawn towards Liverpool 8. McGough would first go down to Streate's, where he read for the first time in 1961, and got to know Pete Brown, who around Christmas of 1960 introduced him to Henri. At the time, Henri was a part-time lecturer at Manchester College of Art. Brown persuaded Henri to become involved in Liverpool's growing poetry scene.

Between 1956 and 1958, Britain saw the emergence of a new and controversial ‘angry generation’ fuelled by three closely connected events. John Osborne's play Look Back in Anger opened at the Royal Court in London on May 8, 1956, followed by the publication of Colin Wilson's book The Outsider. Both men would be linked with Kingsley Amis, who created a new anti-hero, described as a ‘thoroughly cross young man’, in his novel Lucky Jim. The Angry Young Men, primarily concerned with intellectual restrictions, appeared on the scene around the time of the Suez Crisis and vanished after Harold Macmillan's election victory in 1959, a period also characterised by the rise of Elvis Presley and rock 'n' roll. In Liverpool, John Lennon formed a group called the Quarrymen, while Roger McGough came home from Hull University.