Category Archives: Poetry

A poem to read in the bath… ‘A Shropshire Lad II’ by AE Housman #poetry

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Alfred Edward Housman published two books in his lifetime, A Shropshire Lad in 1896 and Last Poems in 1922, followed after his death by More Poems. His part-patriotic, part-nostalgic poetry appealed to a population at war, his words of nature, sorrow and the brevity of life striking a chord during the Great War.

AE Housman

[photo – EO Hoppé]

This is the second poem in A Shropshire Lad. Please search out the poem in an anthology or at your local library.

‘A Shropshire Lad II’

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide

Listen to Alan Brownjohn read ‘A Shropshire Lad II’ at The Poetry Archive.
AE HousmanBUY THE BOOK

Read these other excerpts, and perhaps find a new poet to love:-
‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost
‘Japanese Maple’ by Clive James
‘The Cinnamon Peeler’ by Michael Ondaatje

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘A Shropshire Lad II’ by AE Housman https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4bG via @SandraDanby

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Out Chasing Boys’ by Amanda Huggins #poetry

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Recently published is this small poetry chapbook, The Collective Nouns for Birds by Amanda Huggins, with 24 poems. Huggins is an award-winning writer of flash fiction and short stories, so knowing her skill with the short form I looked forward to this first poetry chapbook with anticipation. And I wasn’t disappointed. I’ve chosen the first poem in the book as it struck a chord from my own childhood. I can smell the salt in the breeze, hear the lapping of the summer waves on the shore and taste the tang of vinegar as I lick my fingers after eating haddock and chips. Amanda Huggins

This poem is subject to copyright restrictions. Please search for the full poem in an anthology or at your local library. A ‘poetry chapbook’ is a slim pamphlet of poems, usually no more than 40 pages.

‘Out Chasing Boys’
We spent summer on the seafront,
two stranded mermaids
killing time.
We rolled up our jeans,
carried our shoes,
blew kisses at the camera
in the photo booth.
Always out, chasing boys,
as if we had forever.

Amanda HugginsBUY THE BOOK

Read my reviews of Brightly Coloured Horses, and Separated from the Sea, both by Amanda Huggins.

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘A Thousand Years You Said’ by Lady Heguri
‘The Cinnamon Peeler’ by Michael Ondaatje
‘After a Row’ by Tom Pickard

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Out Chasing Boys’ by @troutiemcfish https://wp.me/p5gEM4-4v6 via @SandraDanby

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Dunt’ by Alice Oswald #poetry

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‘Dunt: A Poem for a Dried-Up River’ by Alice Oswald won the Forward Prize for the best single poem in 2007. A water nymph tries unsuccessfully to conjure a river from limestone. Punctuated by the refrain ‘try again’ it feels like a wail against climate change and our changing rural landscapes. The water nymph is real, rather it is an artefact found by Oswald in a local West Country museum.

Alice Oswald

Alice Oswald [photo Pako Mera]

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Very small and damaged and quite dry,
a Roman water nymph made of bone
tries to summon a river out of limestone

very eroded faded
her left arm missing and both legs from the knee down
a Roman water nymph made of bone
tries to summon a river out of limestone’

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Alice Oswald

Read this interview in The Guardian as Oswald talks about this collection.

Read these other excerpts, and perhaps find a new poet to love:-
‘Winter Song’ by Wilfred Owen
‘My Heart Leaps Up’ by William Wordsworth
‘Tulips’ by Wendy Cope

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Dunt’ by Alice Oswald https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Rf via @SandraDanby

A poem to read in the bath… ‘My Life’s Stem was Cut’ by Helen Dunmore #poetry

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What a glorious, gentle, heartbreaking poem this is about dying. Helen Dunmore, novelist, poet, winner of the Orange Prize, died too soon on June 5, 2017. In a slim volume of poetry, Inside the Wave, I found ‘My Life’s Stem was Cut’. I defy you to read it without feeling a combination of sadness and hope.

Helen Dunmore

[photo: Caroline Forbes]

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘My life’s stem was cut,
But quickly, lovingly,
I was lifted up,
I heard the rush of the tap
And I was set in water
In the blue vase…’

Helen Dunmore

 

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Read these other excerpts, and perhaps find a new poet to love:-
‘Because I Could Not Stop for Death’ by Emily Dickinson
‘Japanese Maple’ by Clive James
‘I Loved Her Like the Leaves’ by Kakinonoto Hitomaro

Read my reviews of Helen Dunmore’s novels, The Lie, Exposure, Birdcage Walk.

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘My Life’s Stem was Cut’ by Helen Dunmore https://wp.me/p5gEM4-428 via @SandraDanby

A poem to read in the bath… ‘The Unaccompanied’ by Simon Armitage #poetry

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The Unaccompanied is Simon Armitage’s first poetry collection in more than a decade during which he wrote drama, translation, travel articles and prose poetry. This collection doesn’t disappoint. It’s a mixture of familiar Yorkshire moors and sea, urban depression, Nature and human nature, globalisation and social media. His poems are accessible; at times witty and sad, they set the big questions of life against the small familiar details of every day.

Simon Armitage

Simon Armitage [photo: Paul Wolfgang Webster]

My favourite poem from this collection is ‘The Unaccompanied’. A walker at night stops to listen to the sound of singing, songs about mills and mines, myth and the mundane. It is a poem about heritage, about traditions spanning generations, from father to son, of the fathers that went before. It reminded me of traditional fishermen’s choirs, still popular on the East Yorkshire coast.

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Wandering slowly back after dark one night
above a river, towards a suspension bridge,
a sound concerns him that might be a tune
or might not; noise drifting in, trailing off.’

Amazon

Simon Armitage

 

Read these other excerpts, and perhaps find a new poet to love:-
‘A thousand years, you said’ by Lady Heguri
‘Runaways’ by Daniela Nunnari
‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘The Unaccompanied’ by Simon Armitage https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3Rb via @SandraDanby

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Woods etc.’ by Alice Oswald #poetry

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The first time I read a poem by Alice Oswald I was deep in the countryside; in my imagination. She took me away from the bookshop where I stood in front of the poetry shelf, running my fingers along the slim spines, waiting to be tempted, to stand in a woodland deserted of people. It says something about my own need for nature that her words drew me in so effortlessly.

Alice Oswald

Alice Oswald [photo Pako Mera]

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Footfall, which is a means so steady
And in small sections wanders through the mind
Unnoticed, because it beats constantly,
Sweeping together the loose tacks of sound

I remember walking once into increasing
Woods, my hearing like a widening wound.
First your voice and then the rustling ceasing.
The last glow of rain dead in the ground’

Alice Oswald

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Read these other excerpts, and perhaps find a new poet to love:-
‘After a row’ by Tom Pickard
‘Poems’ by Ruth Stone
‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Woods etc.’ by Alice Oswald https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3g8 via @SandraDanby

A poem to read in the bath… ‘Serious’ by James Fenton #poetry

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I picked up Selected Poems by James Fenton [below] in 2015] in my local library, drawn by the cover illustration; the colours, the corn cobs. I flicked through, and this was the poem that caught my eye. It is about love and hope and the fear of future regret. James Fenton

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Awake, alert,
Suddenly serious in love,
You’re a surprise.
I’ve known you long enough –
Now I can hardly meet your eyes.

It’s not that I’m
Embarrassed or ashamed.
You’ve changed the rules
The way I’d hoped they’d change
Before I thought: hopes are for fools.’

James Fenton

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Read these other excerpts, and perhaps find a new poet to love:-
‘Because I could not stop for Death’ by Emily Dickinson
‘Name’ by Carol Ann Duffy
‘Not Waving but Drowning’ by Stevie Smith

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Serious’ by James Fenton https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3g2 via @SandraDanby

A poem to read in the bath… ‘May-Day Song for North Oxford’

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John Betjeman is an English poet so identified with his times and interests. Born in 1906, his family ran a firm in the East End of London making furniture and household items distinctive to Victorians. Betjeman remained fascinated by Victoriana, its architecture, English nature and society, and this is evident in his poetry. He was a founding member of the Victorian Society, and became Poet Laureate in 1972. In his introduction to his collection Slick But Not Streamlined, published in 1947, he wrote of himself ‘so at home with the provincial gaslit towns, the seaside lodgings, the bicycle, the harmonium.’

John Betjeman

Sir John Betjeman (1906-1984)

I read ‘May-Day Song for North Oxford’ on a freezing cold February morning, in a public library in West London. It was the sort of day on which you doubt you will ever be warm again. In a few words, I forgot my surroundings and was with Betjeman on a spring day.

Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘Belbroughton Road is bonny, and pinkly bursts the spray
Of prunus and forsythia across the public way,
For a full spring-tide of blossom seethed and departed hence,
Leaving land-locked pools of jonquils by sunny garden fence.

And a constant sound of flushing runneth from windows where
The toothbrush too is airing in this new North Oxford air
From Summerfields to Lynam’s, the thirsty tarmac dries,
And a Cherwell mist dissolveth on elm-discovering skies.’

John Betjeman

 

‘Collected Poems’ by John Betjeman [UK: John Murray]

Read these other excerpts, and perhaps find a new poet to love:-
‘The Unthinkable’ by Simon Armitage
‘Happiness’ by Stephen Dunn
‘The Death of the Hat’ by Billy Collins

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘May-Day Song for North Oxford’ by John Betjeman https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3fX via @SandraDanby

A #poem to read in the bath… ‘I loved her like the leaves’

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The sense of loss in this Japanese poem is unquenchable. Written by Kakinonoto Hitomaro in 7th century Japan, it speaks of emptiness so great there is no hope or comfort. Hitomaro was a poet of the Asuka period [538-710], serving as court poet to the Empress Jitō, and is considered to be one of the four greatest poets in Japanese history along with Fujiwara no Teika, Sōgi and Bashō.

Kakinonoto Hitomaro

Kakinomoto Hitomaro by Kikuchi Yosai

‘I loved her like the leaves,
The lush green leaves of spring
That pulled down the willows
on the bank’s edge
where we walked
while she was of this world.
I built my life on her.
But man cannot flout
the laws of this world.
To the shimmering wide fields
hidden by the white cloud,
white as white silk scarf
she soared away like the morning bird,
hid from our world like the setting sun.
The child, the gift she left behind –
he cries for food; but always
finding nothing that I might give him,
I pick him up and hold him in my arms.
On the pillow where we lay,
My wife and I, as one,
I pass the daylight lonely till the dusk,
the black night sighing till the dawn.
I grieve and grieve and know no remedy.
I ache and know no road where I might meet her.

[NB. This poem features in two editions of poems that I own and, owing to different translations, there are variations]

The poem features in many anthologies, including my own The Picador Book of Funeral Poems and The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse.
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Read these other excerpts, and perhaps find a new poet to love:-
‘Alone’ by Dea Parkin
‘A thousand years, you said’ by Lady Heguri
‘After a row’ by Tom Pickard

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘I loved her like the leaves’ by Kakinonoto Hitomaro https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3dY via @SandraDanby

A poem to read in the bath… ‘My Mother’

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I was hooked from the first line here, I think because of the familiarity of the cornflake cake. So what came next was a surprise, not something my mother said to me when I made her a cake! This is My Mother by Ruby Robinson [below] from Every Little Sound. Published in 2016, Robinson’s first collection of poems was shortlisted for the Felix Dennis Forward Prize for ‘Best First Collection’, and the TS Eliot Prize for ‘Best Collection’. Ruby Robinson

Here is the first stanza of My Mother. Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full, but please search it out in an anthology or at your local library.

‘She said the cornflake cake made her day,
she said a man cannot be blamed for being
unfaithful: his heart is not in tune with his
extremities and it’s just the way his body
chemistry is. She said all sorts of things.’
Source: Poetry (October 2014)

Read more about Ruby Robinson here.

Ruby Robinson

 

‘Every Little Sound’ by Ruby Robinson [UK: Pavilion Poetry]

Read these other excerpts, and perhaps find a new poet to love:-
‘Runaways’ by Daniela Nunnari
‘Tulips’ by Wendy Cope
‘Cloughton Wyke I’ by John Wedgwood Clarke

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘My Mother’ by Ruby Robinson https://wp.me/p5gEM4-3eq via @SandraDanby