Posted in National Poetry Day 2021

National Poetry Day: I Choose Poetry!

It’s National Poetry Day today – the most exciting day in the poetry calendar, and I’m so proud to be a National Poetry Day ambassador, to let everyone possible in on the secrets of poetry. This is the poem I have given NPD this year on the theme of ‘CHOICE’.

I Choose Poetry

The softness of the lemon in a primrose

the nodding of a bluebell from a bee

the silence in the gaps of a bird’s song

the library of the creatures in a tree

the plumping of a plum in the sunshine

the crazy path an ant left in the grass

the fleeting blue-pink-orange evening

the moment when the sky darks for the stars

the tingle in the thrill of the music

the bounce of the branch as bird flies free

the smell of the earth rise in the rainfall

the things I keep by choosing poetry  

Liz Brownlee

Posted in National Poetry Day 2018

National Poetry Day, 4th October

Forward Arts Foundation, National Poetry Day

The Forward Arts Foundation is a charity committed to widening poetry’s audience, honouring achievement and supporting talent.

National Poetry Day is an annual celebration that inspires people throughout the UK to enjoy, discover and share poems. Everyone is invited to join in. National Poetry Day will take place on Thursday 4th October 2018 and this year’s theme is “Change”.

Go to the NPD website to get details of how to join in, posters, bookmarks, and if you’re celebrating in school, take a look at their Toolkit for Schools for inspiration.

Make sure you use #NationalPoetryDay on Twitter and Websites!

National Poetry Day Ambassadors are a crack corps of inspiring poets who take poetry to new and young audiences – in schools, in bookshops, in libraries, in public squares – all year round.

Each one of them has contributed a new poem on the 2018 theme of Change, and chosen a poem to accompany it, for a special National Poetry Day collection published by Otter-Barry books. It’s a beautiful thing. You can buy it here.

If you want to find this information again, it is under Poetry Resources in the menu at the top and top of the side of this site.

WIN the POETRY BOOKS Recommended for National Poetry Day!!!

Enter this competition to win a set of these wonderful new poetry books, all recommended for National Poetry Day:

Happy Poems by Roger McGough draws together a fantastic collection of upbeat poetry from the very best classic and contemporary poets; Apes to Zebras contains shape poems by favourite children’s poets Roger Stevens, Liz Brownlee and Sue Hardy-Dawson, certain to entrance young readers; Rachel Rooney’s new collection A Kid in My Class features stunning illustrations by former UK Children’s Laureate Chris Riddell, and every type of kid will find themselves in its pages; The Same Inside is a collection to encourage empathy, with poems covering friendship and togetherness, difference, tolerance, bullying, by Liz Brownlee, Matt Goodfellow and Roger Stevens; while The Song of the Dodo by Hilda Offen is a vibrant and accessible collection full of funny, thoughtful and surprising poems.

Plus, the prize package will also contain Poetry for a Change, the first ever National Poetry Day anthology. It features new poems by the National Poetry Day Ambassadors, Deborah Alma, Liz Brownlee, John Canfield, Joseph Coelho, Sally Crabtree, Jan Dean, Marjori Lotfi Gill, Chrissie Gittins, Matt Goodfellow, Remi Graves, Sophie Herxheimer, Michaela Morgan, Brian Moses, Cheryl Moskowitz, Abigail Parry, Rachel Piercey, Rachel Rooney, Joshua Seigal, Roger Stevens, Jon Stone, and Kate Wakeling. Each poet has chosen a favourite poem to share too, so you’ll also find classics as well as suggestions for further reading (and writing), making this a collection to enjoy all year round.

To enter email poetryday@forwardartsfoundation.org with the subject Poetry for a Change World Book Day NPD competition. The deadline is 14th September 2018.

Posted in National Poetry Day 2018

Otter-Barry Books to Publish Official National Poetry Day Anthology

Independent publisher Otter-Barry Books will be publishing Poetry For a Change, the official children’s anthology for National Poetry Day on 4th October.

National Poetry Day encourages everyone to read, share and enjoy poems on one special day each year.

There are a number of National Poetry Day Ambassadors who do their very best to spread the joy on NPD and throughout the week of NPD – and indeed, throughout the year. Those ambassadors have each written a poem and chosen a poem on the theme of ‘change’ to go in the book, which is beautifully illustrated by Chie Hosaka.

See some of the beautiful poems and illustrations on the Otter-Barry link.

 

Posted in Freedom Poem, 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 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.

 

 

© Shauna Darling Robertson

Posted in Freedom Poem, National Poetry Day 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

 

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

Posted in Freedom Poem, National Poetry Day 2017

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)