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National Poetry Day 2017 – Free the Poem Event, Exeter Library!
Category: National Poetry Day 2017
#NationalPoetryDay Freedom Poem by Philip Ardagh
TO BE BORN FREE
‘A Small Poem For A Big Subject’
To be born free
Is how it should be.
It should be the norm,
The standard,
The default setting.
To be born free
Is how it should be.
It should be the usual,
The convention,
The constant.
To be born free
Is how it should be.
As it is for me.
Free to talk,
Free to walk,
Free to balk,
At the lies
Our leaders
Feed us.
Not to be thrown
In jail
For an email.
Not to be the property
Of another
Not to be silenced
Gagged
Imprisoned
Raped.
To be born free
Is how it should be.
#NationalPoetryDay – Sue Hardy Dawson’s Freedom Poem, Absence
Sue Hardy-Dawson is a poet and illustrator, her latest book, Where Zebras go, can be bought here.
#NationalPoetryDay Poem by Shauna Darling Robertson
NO UNAUTHORISED VEHICLES
(poem for a sign on a gate)
So authorise my vehicle.
Then rubber-stamp my car.
I’m done with steering oh-so-near,
I long to motor far.
But every time I venture out,
I’m halted by a sign:
Keep Out. Be Gone. Just Go Away.
This Road is Mine, All Mine.
But sir, it’s you who’ve made this
the road where I must go,
by putting up your tempting sign –
the one that tells me, NO.
#NationalPoetryDay Freedom Poem Animation – Skylark
#NationalPoetryDay Freedom Poem by Alan Cadman
The Forest’s Call
Staring with jewelled eyes;
stretched on a sturdy branch.
Concealed in panther black,
feeling the forest’s call.
A child, licks on ice cream,
looks through the zoo’s steel bars;
wishing to stroke his fur
before moving along.
© Alan Cadman 2017
#NationalPoetryDay Free as the Wind by Liz Brownlee
Here’s my poem for National Poetry Day up on the National Poetry Day Website – all the other National Poetry Day Ambassadors have poems there too, also available as a FREE anthology, here.
Free as the Wind
by Liz Brownlee
It’s slight and likes
to infiltrate
makes supple grasses
susurrate
it’s heavy and ready
to hurricane
power the storm clouds
splatter the rain
it swirls in the sand
bends barleycorn
dances the flowers’ heads
round the lawn
it flattens the trees
clack-clatters the bins
rat-tatters in dreams
sets leaves into spins
it slivers in houses
to whistle and haunt
makes the bare branches
jazz–hand and jaunt
it batters and scatters
the litter around
grapples the shadows
for space on the ground
it smooths unsmooth stones
whips away words
scattering syllables
dishevelling birds
it cannot be summoned
or seen or confined
as restless as waiting
as careless as time
it gusts from a suddenness
cannot be pinned
for nothing is free as
as free as the wind
©Liz Brownlee
#NationalPoetryDay Freedom Poem Video by Bernard Young
Bernard Young reads his poem Absent.
It’s National Poetry Day!!!!
Watch out for poems and poetry videos all day here today!
National Poetry Day Freedom Poem by Liz Brownlee
Snow Petrels
On skies and seas
veiled white with light,
snow petrels weave
and wheel in flight,
they glide and skim
from high to low,
a falling flock
of feathered snow.
In courtship chases
pair by pair
they braid their paths
of freezing air,
birds of Antarctic
paradise,
the cliffs, the sea,
the snow, the ice.
© Liz Brownlee 2012
(From Animal Magic, IRON Press)
#NationalPoetryDay Freedom Poem Video – Angels by Jan Dean
Continuing my series of poem videos – this video of Rev. Lee Barnes of Saint Stephen’s and Holy Trinity, Bristol reading Jan Dean’s Angels was made for NPD 2015, but fits 2017’s theme of Freedom very well!
National Poetry Day Freedom – Daisy’s Sky poem
Freedom Poem for #NationalPoetryDay by Celia Warren
FREE
This poem is free:
there is nothing to pay.
The downside is
it has nothing to say.
National Poetry Day Poem by Dom Conlon
NPD’s theme this year is ‘Freedom’.
Free From…
Free from the darkness which held me tight
Free from the nappy I’d wear at night
Free from the hand which took me to walk
Free from the rule to work without talk
Free from the joys of sleeping till ten
Free from the need to come home again
Free from the days of not needing cash
Free from the impulse to hurry or dash
Free from the parents standing by me
Free from the future once easy to see
Free from the lightness I felt in my heart
Free from the summers which now barely start
Free from the feeling of being a boy
Free from the freedom I used to enjoy
Freedom Poem for National Poetry Day from Sue Hardy-Dawson
Sue Hardy-Dawson is a poet and illustrator, her latest book, Where Zebras go, can be bought here.
Poetry Roundabout 