In celebration of World Poetry Day
Have a look around through excerpts from a selection of poems old and new, and some videos too
(nope, didn’t mean to do that)
From the private ease of Mother’s womb
I fall into the lighted room.
Baby Song, Thom Gunn
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls
Morning Song, Sylvia Plath
The Angel that presided o’er my birth
Said, ‘Little creature, form’d of Joy and Mirth,
‘Go love without the help of any Thing on Earth.’
The Angel that presided o’er my birth, William Blake
I, Bertolt Brecht, came out of the black forests.
My mother moved me into the cities as I lay
Inside her body. And the coldness of the forests
Will be inside me till my dying day
Of Poor B.B. Bertolt Brecht
Precious, the soundless breathing of wife and children
In a house on a field lit by the morning star
And in the 51st Year of that Century, while My Brother Cried in the Trench, while My Enemy Glared from the Cave, Hyam Plutzik
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2z-Cd3luqA” align=”center” /]
I am a Child of this World,
And a Child of Grace,
And Mother, I shall be glad when it is over,
I am Bog-Face
Bog-Face, Stevie Smith
The day my father came back from the sea
broke and handsome
I saw him walking across the savannah
and knew at once it was him.
Conductors of His Mystery (for Albert Joseph), Anthony Joseph
In my childhood trees were green
And there was plenty to be seen.
When I was five the black dreams came;
Nothing after was quite the same.
Autobiography, Louis Macneice
My prime of youth is but a frost of cares;
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain;
Elegy for Himself, Chidiock Tichborne
But the young queen would not listen;
She rose in her pale nightgown;
She drew in the heavy casement
And pushed the latches down
The Cap and Bells, W.B Yeats
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYMtmQ_H570″ align=”center” /]
For the youth whom whisky had led astray
The morning after was the first day
Apple Blossom, Louis Macneice
All the world said, Nobody is braver, nobody is bolder,
nobody else has done
anything to equal it. He went home as bold as he could be
with the swinging rainbow on his shoulder
Legend, Judith Wright
Now an apprentice washes his cheeks
With salt water and sunlight
A Sea-Chantey, Derek Walcott
Under the parabola of a ball,
a child turning into a man,
I looked into the air too long
How to Kill, Keith Douglas
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0N94ATopT8″ align=”center” /]
How happy is the little Stone
That rambles in the Road alone,
And doesn’t care about Careers
How happy is the little Stone, Emily Dickinson
Yes I could be a beggar
Maybe not a tax collector
But I could be a streetwise snob,
But I’ll jus keep reciting de poems dat I am writing
One day I’ll have a proper job
It’s Work, Benjamin Zephaniah
I have never walked on Westminster Bridge
or had a close-up view of daffodils.
My childhood’s roots are the Haitian hills
where runaway slaves made a freedom pledge
and scarlet poincianas flaunt their scent.
Toussaint L’Ouverture Acknowledges Wordsworth’s Sonnet ‘To Toussaint L’Overture’, John Agard
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOX1ETA0eUo” align=”center” /]
I shall never be
Different. Love me.
I cannot grow, W.H Auden
She samples my heartbeat and mixes it with
techno so hardcore it’s spewing out Audis
on acid for fuel. Lipstick Lesbians,
that girls’ club used to be run in Brixton
like a slow-burning fuse. I was down.
She picked me up.
Josephine Baker Finds Herself, Patience Agbabi
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3EKXXPfeFg” align=”center” /]
I’ll love you till the ocean
Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
Like geese about the sky
As I walked out one evening, W.H Auden
That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again: and then, in dreaming,
The clouds methought would open and show riches
Ready to drop upon me; that, when I wak’d
I cried to dream again.
The Tempest, William Shakespeare
Rise like Lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number –
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you –
Ye are many – they are few
The Mask of Anarchy, Percy Bysshe Shelley
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8umCijRdnQ” align=”center” /]
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, W.H. Auden
You’re a nasty surprise in a sandwich.
You’re a drawing-pin caught in my sock.
You’re the limpest of shakes from a hand which
I’d have thought would be firm as a rock
God, A Poem, James Fenton
Every old man I see
In October-coloured weather
Seems to say to me:
‘I once was your father.’
Memory of My Father, Patrick Kavanagh
Thou’lt listen to my lengthened tale,
And pity me when I am frail –
A Mother to Her Waking Infant, Joanna Baillie
An old man stirs the fire to a blaze,
In the house of a child, of a friend, of a brother.
He has over-lingered his welcome; the days,
Grown desolate, whisper and sigh to each other
An old man stirs the fire to a blaze, W.B. Yeats
And the octogenarian loves the little flocks.
He is quite blue; the terrible wind tries his breathing.
The narcissi look up like children, quickly and whitely
Among the Narcissi, Sylvia Plath
I have borne this baked potato
O’er the Generation Gap,
Pray accept this baked potato
Let me lay it in your heated lap
Giving Potatoes, Adrian Mitchell
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
Do not go gently into that good night, Dylan Thomas
And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
With their bones picked clean and the clean bones gone
And death shall have no dominion, Dylan Thomas
I do not know what age I am,
I am no mortal age;
I know nothing of women,
Nothing of cities,
I cannot die
Innocence, Patrick Kavanagh
[arve url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7OE6bDfM2M” align=”center” /]
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.
Eternity, William Blake
