This poem has one of my all-time favourite titles, as well as one of my favourite endings: In the pink light the small red sun goes rolling, rolling, round and round and round at the same height in perpetual sunset, comprehensive, consoling, while the ships consider it. Apparently they have reached their destination. It would […]
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Derek Walcott – ‘A Sea Change’
With a change of government the haze of wide rain which you begin to hear as the ruler hears the crowd gathering under the balcony, the leader who has promised the permanent cobalt of a change of government with the lilac and violet of his cabinet’s change. I couldn’t resist posting this today. It’s from […]
Emily Dickinson on Poetry
If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way? […]
Alice Oswald — ‘River’
In the black gland of the earth the tiny inkling of a river The first impression of these opening lines is of symmetry and contrast: one line for earth, one for water; the silvery tinsel of the river against a black background. And notice how ‘inkling’ is perfect for the hesitant, broken thread of the […]
Simon Armitage on Poetry
Poetry is about manner as much as it is about matter – the manner in which words behave under certain conditions and in particular surroundings From the Introduction to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.