Hello again! It is still National Poetry Day – if you haven’t seen the video of the poem I wrote especially for NPD, as I am a National Poetry Day Ambassador – see the entry before this on the home page!
I was also asked to choose a poem to go with mine, and this is the one I picked. The magical The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House, by Thomas Hardy.
Yes, it’s tomorrow. Poets everywhere are planning, posting, poeting and preparing for the BIGGEST and BEST poetry party all on one day. You can take part!
National Poetry Day’s website has downloadable educational resources that are amazingly popular. And it’s not too late to share their toolkits, posters and lesson plans. They have cleared permissions on loads of poems on the theme of Vision: print out all you like and stick them in your window or on your wall. One is by me! To #ShareAPoem, take a picture for Twitter or Insta, tag #NationalPoetryDay. They’ll be looking!
Here is my poem for today – it’s called Blackbird. Mainly because it’s about a blackbird.
The day of deliciousness for poets is nigh and getting nigher. National Poetry Day’s theme this year is vision, and I have a few poetry films to share up until the day.
In fact they are all bird poems.
Today it is the Curlew – the curlew is a rare and getting rarer sight, in fact it has just been declared endangered in the UK.
Hope you enjoyed that.
The National Poetry Day website is FULL of poets and poems and lesson plans and posters and general poetic delightfulness if you’d like to visit and find something to see or use on National Poetry Day.
It’s getting closer to the date when Coral Rumble‘s new book, Riding a Lion (Troika) will be out; it will be excellent, and you can pre-order it here.
On International Poetry Day I produced a video of films about animals for a school – here’s one of the poems from that!
I thought it was time for another poetry performance – this is the wonderful Jan Dean (with whom I wrote Reaching the Stars, Poems About Extraordinary Women and Girls, along with Michaela Morgan).
Hello! Today, Matt and Roger and I are launching Be the Change, Poems to Help you Save the World in performance – brought to you from lockdown in Manchester, Bristol and somewhere deep in France… we are wondering whether to do some lesson plans for other poems in the book, if you’d like that, could you get in touch so we can gauge demand?
So – without further ado – the poets perform!
Hope you enjoyed that!
Many poems have little tips at the end for ways in which young people can help save the planet with small, achievable actions.
The book is available here on Amazon, (also available on Kindle), and here from an independent book shop.
Catherine Benson’s gorgeous poem, Wing Bone, which is loosely on the subject of Change, for National Poetry Day.
Another poem with the loose association with Change, for National Poetry Day.
A poem on the subject of ‘Change’ in the run-up to National Poetry Day, October 4th. This poem appears in my book Animal Magic, pub. IRON Press.
As part of National Poetry Day 21015, we made 14 poetry on 2015s theme of ‘Light’. This poem by Pie Corbett, read during one day on the streets of Bristol, also fits 2018s theme – ‘Change’.
National Poetry Day this year is on 4th October.
Philip Waddell is a witty and prolific poet whose poems can be found in many anthologies. Here he is performing his dragon poem, Ashley.
A perfect end to the week which included Empathy Day, Laura Mucha performing her poem Get Off!
Poetry Roundabout 