10.15.15

Last Thursday was National Poetry day. It seems that, in part due to social media, we have a national everything day. A while ago, someone was lamenting that National Equality for Women day was being overshadowed by National Grilled Cheese day.

For me, every day is/should be about or for poetry, because poetry is for everyone and for daily life. We all deserve something beautiful. But, if it takes a national day to get someone reading something they normally wouldn't read, then excellent.

Since I totally missed this (valid reasons but whatever!), I will try and share other's entries for NPD/a little roundup. (yeaaah totally lazy right?).

Wikipedia as usual with the basics of how it began. This year's theme is "Light". In the US, National Poetry Month is in April.

From the Forward Arts Foundation:

Every year, all are invited to join in, breaking with the tyranny of prose by thinking of a poem and sharing it imaginative ways, with the hashtags #nationalpoetryday and #thinkofapoem. What does it mean, to see the world as a poet does? The best responses to our Make Like A Poet digital challenge were blazed across Blackpool Lights on the day.

(I kinda hate hashtags. But I do like the idea of breaking up with how we normally speak/read/write, and see the world through different eyes). Read on for other participants in the event.

It was started by William Sieghert and is celebrating 21 years. From the British Radio 4 celebration:

Last Thursday, on the festival’s 21st birthday, Radio 4 welcomed it into full adulthood with We British, which aimed to explore the last 1,400 years of British history, culture and experience through the words of both great and lesser-known poets.

(...)

Best – and most memorable – were the poems themselves. Each programme was peppered with them; deftly chosen, beautifully read, they conveyed a sense of the living past that went far beyond bookshelf history. Among dozens of highlights, there was Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, lilting, alliterative and oddly exotic; Marvell’s unnervingly persuasive To His Coy Mistress, delivered with seismic gusto by Barrie Rutter; Wordsworth’s mournful, still-relevant sonnet London, 1802; and a section of Eliot’s era-defining The Waste Land, read in turn by Alec Guinness, Paul Scofield, Eileen Atkins, Jeremy Irons, and Viggo Mortensen.

If you'd like something a little bit lighthearted, here are some poems dedicated to babies, friends, even goats! (Do view the videos, I am particularly curious to watch one that a woman recites as she signs simultaneously in BSL).

The Scottish Poetry Library has a series of cards on this years' theme. I don't understand Scots at all, but there appear to be some works in that language as well--always lovely to hear works in languages other than English.

There were many great celebrations of poetry on this day. I particularly like the idea of a "poem in your pocket" for the day, to act as a lens, worry stone, or just a reminder of beauty.

And for something completely different, Poe's The Raven as read by Christopher Walken. He's totally knitting in this video!