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2016 national poetry day forward arts foundation thursday 6 october idea book

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Page 1: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

2016national poetry day

forward arts foundation

thursday 6 october

idea book

Page 2: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

n a t i o n a l p o e t r y d a y . c o . u k

about the dayNational Poetry Day is about promoting the enjoyment, discovery and sharing of poetry. Got a message you want to give someone? We encourage you to “say it with a poem.” This little book gives yougreat poems—plus 5 ideas for where to leave your messages.

Use the hashtags #nationalpoetryday and #sayitwithapoemto share your celebration activities.

Twitter: @poetrydayukInstagram: nationalpoetryday

Page 3: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

idea1voicemailpoemmessage

n a t i o n a l p o e t r y d a y . c o . u k

Page 4: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

n a t i o n a l p o e t r y d a y . c o . u k

Two Cures for Love

1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy way: get to know him better.

—Wendy Cope, from 100 Prized Poems Twenty-five years of the Forward Books, Faber & Faber, 2016, reproduced by kind permission of the publisher

Page 5: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

n a t i o n a l p o e t r y d a y . c o . u k

Apology

Forgive me, love, for almost enjoyingyour nightmare, the one where I had disappearedor been taken, or left. A dream so clearyou woke me calling my name—your nickname for me, a single crushed syllable—from whatever dark plane you were trapped in until I shook you from it.

Of all the ways I love my name on your voice— traveling up from our kitchen or studyon some practical, fact-finding mission

Page 6: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

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dutiful as a carrier pigeon, or on the far endof a phone, or in the last, long, impractical motions of desire—I think I liked it best

breaking my sleep that night, for what more could I ask from my life than to be wanted like that? And when I let myself be found, and you clung to me selflessly, shaking,and told me the dream, I almost wished that I were lost, that you might look for me.

—Chelsea Rathburn, from A Raft of Grief, Autumn House Press, 2013,reproduced by kind permission of the author

Page 7: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

n a t i o n a l p o e t r y d a y . c o . u k

idea 2mirror

poem message

Page 8: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

n a t i o n a l p o e t r y d a y . c o . u k

Mirror

Hold me to the mirror lightand make my meaning clear.The world reverses left to rightwhen I am there, not here.

—Rachel Rooney, 2016, reproduced by kind permission of the author

Page 9: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

n a t i o n a l p o e t r y d a y . c o . u k

Leda

My sister tells a story about a swan and a jeweled strand.I have never thought of myself as a bird before.A heron stabs after the half moon among the current,then lifts off, carving into the horizon.The sea shirs the sand where my foot rests.Caught in the mirror, her daughter blooms pale,hung from the morning like a pearl pendant.

—Anne M. Doe Overstreet, from Delicate Machinery Suspended, T. S. Poetry Press,2011, reproduced by kind permission of the publisher

Page 10: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

n a t i o n a l p o e t r y d a y . c o . u k

idea 3door

poem message

Page 11: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

n a t i o n a l p o e t r y d a y . c o . u kMystery of Doors

Every jammed door has its trick how much pressure to apply where to push, just so, how deep at what angle to jiggle, pull out

So, too, with the apparentlydifficult doors of opportunitythat stubbornly balk at all rattlingyet suddenly yield at the key moment.

—Yahia Lababidi, from Balancing Acts, Press 53, 2016, reproduced by kind permission of the author

Page 12: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

n a t i o n a l p o e t r y d a y . c o . u kFrom a Window

Up here, with June, the sycamore throwsAcross the window a whispering screen;

I shall miss the sycamore more, I suppose,Than anything else on this earth that is out in green.

But I mean to go through the door without fear,Not caring much what happens here

When I’m away:—How green the screen is across the panes

Or who goes laughing along the lanesWith my old lover all summer day.

—Charlotte Mew, public domain

Page 13: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

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idea 4pillowpoem message

Page 14: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

n a t i o n a l p o e t r y d a y . c o . u kCloudberries

You give me cloudberry jam from Lapland, Bog amber, snow-line titbits, scrumptious Cloudberries sweetened slowly by the cold, And costly enough for cloudberry wars (Diplomatic wars, my dear).

Imagine us Among the harvesters, keeping our distanceIn sphagnum fields on the longest day When dawn and dusk like frustrated lovers Can kiss, legend has it, once a year. Ah, Kisses at our age, cloudberry kisses.

—Michael Longley, from 100 Prized Poems Twenty-five years of the Forward Books, Faber & Faber, 2016, reproduced by kind permission of the publisher

Page 15: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

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Bright Star

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

And watching, with eternal lids apart,Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,

The moving waters at their priestlike taskOf pure ablution round earth’s human shores,

Or gazing on the new soft-fallen maskOf snow upon the mountains and the moors—

No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,Pillow‘d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,

Page 16: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

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To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

—John Keats, public domain

Page 17: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

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idea 5 vehiclepoemmessage

Page 18: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

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Home Thoughts

The airmail from India, a weatherbeaten blue, with wax marks from the candle you had used to write by reached me. You write that reach is what travellers there do rather than arrive being more respectful to the gods of place. For years your letters from around the world have kept on reaching me whereverI’m hunched beside an atlas and a lamp.When you last saw me I was living in a room across the road from but a floor below

Page 19: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

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the room we used to share ten years ago.Only kindness stopped you sayingit took me quite some time to cross that road; and looking from my window I expect to see myself looking out to where in ten years time I’ll be looking back again to see...the last things you mention are the Parsee towers of silence where the dead are left for vultures to attend.I warm to that. It sort of brings things home.

—Jamie McKendrick, from 100 Prized Poems Twenty-five years of the Forward Books, Faber & Faber, 2016, reproduced by kind permission of the publisher

Page 20: national poetry day 2016 - Poetry | Poems | English Poetry · 2016-10-20 · nationalpoetryday.co.uk Two Cures for Love 1 Don’t see him. Don’t phone or write a letter. 2 The easy

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TravellingThis is the spot:—how mildly does the sun Shine in between the fading leaves! the airIn the habitual silence of this woodIs more than silent: and this bed of heath, Where shall we find so sweet a resting-place? Come!—let me see thee sink into a dreamOf quiet thoughts,—protracted till thine eyeBe calm as water when the winds are gone And no one can tell whither.—my sweet friend! We two have had such happy hours together That my heart melts in me to think of it.

—William Wordsworth, public domain