Another poem with an association with Change, season and ideas, for National Poetry Day.
Tag: Forward Arts Foundation
Gerard Benson and River Song, for #NationalPoetryDay
The wonderful Gerard Benson and River Song, for National Poetry Day’s theme of change – you will never tire of listening to his voice.
#NationalPoetryDay; Change. Slavka Liskova reads Susan Richardson’s Snow Geese Solstice.
Susan Richardson’s fabulous poem always sends thrills up and down my arms – here is the change of spring, and summer too, with the snow geese. Susan’s book – Words the Turtle Taught Me is full of wonderfully atmospheric poems on the natural world. Read by actress, Slavka Liskova
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.
National Poetry Day is on 4th October – Are you Planning an Event?
Are you ready to celebrate #poetry on #nationalpoetryday? Are you putting on an event? If so, National Poetry Day would like to hear from you! Post the information at https://nationalpoetryday.co.uk/join-in/ or email poetryday@forwardartsfoundation.org #poetryforachange
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.
#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 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.
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!
