Poems of the Week from 2020

Poem of the Week December 26th

The Loch Ness Monster's Song, Edwin Morgan 'Sssnnnwhuffffll? Hnwhuffl hhnnwfl hnflhfl? Gdroblboblhobngbl gbl gl g g g g glbgl'

Poem of the Week December 19th

Eavan Boland, The Emigrant Irish ' Like oil lamps we put them out the back, of our houses, of our minds. We had lights better than, newer than and then a time came, this time and now we need them. Their dread, makeshift example.'

Poem of the Week December 12th

Encounter at St. Martin's, Ken Smith 'I tell a wanderer's tale, the same I began long ago, a boy in a barn, I am always lost in it. The place is always strange to me. In my pocket the wrong money or none, the wrong paper maps of another town, the phrase book for yesterday's language, just a ticket to the next station, and my instructions. In the lobby of the Banco Bilbao a dark woman will slip me a key, a package, the name of a hotel, a numbered account, the first letters of an unknown alphabet.'

Poem of the week December 5th

A dream of leavin, James Berry ' Man, so used to notn, this is a dream I couldn't dream of dreamin so - I scare I might wake up. One day I would be Englan bound! A travel would have me on sea not chained down below, every tick of clock, but free, man! Free like tourist! Never see me coulda touch world of Englan - when from all accounts I hear that is where all we prosperity end up. I was always in a dream of leavin. My half-finished house was on land where work-laden ancestors' bones lay. The old plantation land still stretch-out down to the sea, giving grazing to cattle.'

Poem of the week November 28th

Sisu, Lavinia Greenlaw ‘To persevere in hope of summer. To adapt to its broken promise. To love winter.’

Poem of the Week November 21st

World Poems on the Underground And now goodbye, Jaroslav Seifert. Poetry is with us from the start.

Poem of the Week November 14th

Isaiah 2.4 'And they shall beate their swords into plow-shares, and their speares into pruning hookes; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learne warre any more'

Poem of the Week November 7th

Heroes, Kathleen Raine ' This war's dead heroes, who has seen them? They rise, in smoke above the burning city, Faint clouds, dissolving into sky'

Poem of the Week October 31st

Nightsong: City, Dennis Brutus 'Sleep well, my love, sleep well: the harbour lights glaze over restless docks, police cars cockroach through the tunnel streets;'

Poem of the Week October 24th

The Thing Not Said, E.A. Markham ‘We need life-jackets now to float On words which leave so much unsaid.’

Poem of the Week October 17th

A song for England, Andrew Salkey 'An' a so de rain a-fall An 'a so de snow a-rain An 'a so de fog a-fall An 'a so de sun a-fail'

Poem of the Week October 10th

Guinep, Olive Senior 'Our mothers have a thing about guinep: Mind you don't eat guinep in your good clothes. It will stain them.'

Poem of the Week October 3rd

Benediction, James Berry 'Thanks to the ear that someone may hear Thanks to seeing that someone may see'

Poem of the Week September 26th

The Sloth, Theodore Roethke ‘In moving-slow he has no Peer. You ask him something in his Ear, He thinks about it for a Year;’

Poem of the Week September 19th

Layers of Kant reveal: Safrina Ahmed Winner, Foyle Young Poets, 2011 Celebrating 20 years of The Poetry Society’s Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award ‘The clouded mind is Kant without his hair extensions, his eyelash curler. We met last night and he was like Christmas, sad, a tree.’

Poem of the Week September 12th

from Autumn Journal, Louis MacNeice ‘September has come, it is hers Whose vitality leaps in the autumn, Whose nature prefers Trees without leaves and a fire in the fireplace . . .’

Poem of the Week September 5th

For the Life of This Planet, Grace Nichols ‘ The way the red sun surrenders its wholeness to curving ocean bit by bit. The way curving ocean gives birth to the birth of stars in the growing darkness, wearing everything in its path to cosmic smoothness’

Poem of the Week 29th August

Green the land of my poem, Mahmoud Darwish ‘Green the land of my poem is green and high Slowly I tell it slowly with the grace of a seagull riding the waves on the book of water I bequeath it written down to the one who asks to whom shall we sing when salt poisons the dew?’

Poem of the Week 22nd August

Bam Chi Chi La La London, 1969, Lorna Goodison ‘In Jamaica she was a teacher. Here, she is charwoman at night in the West End. She eats a cold midnight meal carried from home’

Poem of the Week 15th August

Gherkin Music, Jo Shapcott ‘walk the spiral up out of the pavement into your own reflection, into transparency, into the space where flat planes are curves and you are transposed’

Poem of the Week 8th August

Moment in a Peace March, Grace Nichols ‘A holy multitude pouring Moment in a Peace March through the gates of Hyde Park – A great hunger repeated in cities all over the world’

Poem of the Week 1st August

And if I speak of Paradise, Roger Robinson ‘And if I speak of Paradise then I’m speaking of my grandmother who told me to carry it always on my person, concealed, so no one else would know but me.’

Poem of the Week July 25th

Love Poems on the Underground The River Road , Sean O’Brien. Come for a walk down the river road, For though you're all a long time dead The waters part to let us pass

Poem of the Week July 18th

London Poems on the Underground Sweet Thames Flow Softly, Ewan MacColl. I met my girl at Woolwich Pier, beneath a big crane standing.

Poem of the Week July 11th

My Voice ,Partaw Naderi Translated by Sarah Maguire and Yama Yari ' I come from a distant land with a foreign knapsack on my back with a silenced song on my lips As I travelled down the river of my life I saw my voice (like Jonah) swallowed by a whale And my very life lived in my voice' Kabul, December 1989

Poem of the Week July 4th

African Poems on the Underground I Sing of Change Niyi Osundare I sing of the beauty of Athens without its slaves

Poem of the Week June 29th

Poem of the Week June 22nd

Poem of the Week June 15th

Poem of the Week June 8th

Poem of the Week June 1st

I am Becoming My Mother, Lorna Goodison ' Yellow/brown woman fingers smelling always of onions My mother raises rare blooms and waters them with tea'

Poem of the Week May 25th

The Present, Michael Donaghy ' For the present there is just one moon, though every level pond gives back another .But the bright disc shining in the black lagoon, perceived by astrophysicist and lover ,is milliseconds old. And even that light's seven minutes older than its source. And the stars we think we see on moonless nights are long extinguished. And, of course, this very moment, as you read this line, is literally gone before you know it. Forget the here-and-now. We have no time but this device of wantonness and wit. Make me this present then: your hand in mine, and we'll live out our lives in it.'

Poem of the Week May 18th

Pilgrim ,Eunice de Souza 'The hills crawl with convoys. Slow lights wind round and down the dark ridges to yet another termite city. The red god rock watches all that passes. He spoke once. The blood-red boulders are his witness.. God rock, I'm a pilgrim. Tell me- Where does the heart find rest?'

Poem of the Week May 11th

Poem of the Week May 4th

Poem of the Week April 26th