This is a short poem from a pamphlet by Yorkshire-born, Lancashire-based poet Dea Parkin. The collection is varied, designed to appeal to people who don’t normally read poetry. Some of the poems are based on stories or images. When I read the first stanza of ‘Alone’, I knew where I was standing. Read it. Where do you see yourself? Because of copyright restrictions I am unable to reproduce the poem in full.

‘Alone’
I stand in a startling place
White-cold and bleak
With absence all around.
 
The clamour of the world
Grows bold and strident in my ear
But I am quieted.

‘Any Other Business’ by Dea Parkin [UK: Open Circle]

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘Name’ by Carol Ann Duffy
‘Not Waving but Drowning’ by Stevie Smith
‘Lost Acres’ by Robert Graves

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘Alone’ by @DeaWriter via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-2lp

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This is the second time this year I’ve chosen a poem by Billy Collins [below] but I make no apology. He had me by the second stanza [below], I was ten again having already been a champion showjumper and a soldier.

[photo: poetryfoundation.org]

‘On Turning Ten’
… At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
By drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

I defy you to read this poem, and not remember when you also were ten.

‘Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes‘ by Billy Collins [UK: Picador] 

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘Elegy’ by Carol Ann Duffy
‘Cloughton Wyke I’ by John Wedgwood Clarke
‘Poems’ by Ruth Stone

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
A #poem to read in the bath: ‘On Turning Ten’ by Billy Collins via @SandraDanby http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1YS

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Ruth Stone [below] was rocked to sleep in her mother’s arms to the sound of Tennyson’s verse. A poet all her life, she died in 2011 aged 96. In 2009 her collection What Love Comes To was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. This poem, included in her 2002 National Book Award-winning collection In the Next Galaxy, is about ageing, a topic she returned to again and again.

[photo: poetryfoundation.org]

‘Poems’
When you come back to me
It will be crow time
And flycatcher time,
With rising spirals of gnats
Between the apple trees.
Every weed will be quadrupled,
Coarse, welcoming
And spine-tipped.

To listen read a tribute to Ruth Stone on her death, published in the New York Times, click here.

‘In the Next Galaxy’ by Ruth Stone [Copper Canyon Press]

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘The Road Not Taken’ by Robert Frost
‘Japanese Maple’ by Clive James
‘Lost Acres’ by Robert Graves

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Enjoy this #poem by Ruth Stone http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Ms @CopperCanyonPrs via @SandraDanby

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Today’s poem to read in your bath is from Red Tree, the debut poetry collection by Yorkshire poet Daniela Nunnari.

[photo: valleypressuk.com ]

‘Runaways’

Run away with me.

We’ll drive down roads
With old stone walls.
We’ll close our eyes
By waterfalls,
And listen.

You’ll how me how to skim a stone
And how to pick the perfect one.
I’ll catch the icy river ripples,
Frozen like February, in my phone.’

So evocative of new love, the exhilaration and freedom of getting away from it all. The countryside and nature feature in examination of the fantasy/reality elements of a daily relationship.

My other favourites in this edition? ‘Optrex’, ‘Buoy’ and ‘There’s Something in the Trees’.

For more about Daniela Nunnari and publisher Valley Press, click here.

‘Red Tree’ by Daniela Nunnari [UK: Valley Press] 

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘Cloughton Wyke I’ by John Wedgwood Clarke
‘Alone’ by Dea Parkin
‘Sometimes and After’ by Hilda Doolittle

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
Daniela Nunnari’s RUNAWAYS http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1HI Today’s #poem to read in the bath: chosen by @SandraDanby

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Happiness is a state we all aspire to but today there are heightened expectations of happiness, more children are said to be unhappy, depressed, disappointed, disaffected. This poem by the American Stephen Dunn [below] suggests a pragmatic approach to life.

[photo: stephendunnpoet.com]

‘Happiness’
A state you must dare not enter
                  With hopes of staying,
Quicksand in the marshes, and all
 

The roads leading to a castle
That doesn’t exist.

For more about Stephen Dunn and his other poetry, click here for his website. His collection Different Hours won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2001.

‘Different Hours’ by Stephen Dunn [WW Norton & Company] 

Read these other excerpts and find a new poet to love:-
‘Oxfam’ by Carol Ann Duffy
‘Digging’ by Seamus Heaney
‘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: ‘Happiness’ by Stephen Dunn http://wp.me/p5gEM4-1Mf via @SandraDanby

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