Dreaming on naught but idle poetry,
That fruitless and unprofitable art,
Good unto none, but least to the professors.
– Ben Jonson, ‘Every Man in his Humour’
Are these the fruits of all my travails and expenses? Is this the scope and aim of all thy studies? Are these the hopeful courses wherewith I have so long flattered all my expectations from thee? Verses? Poetry?
– Ben Jonson, Poetaster (Ovid’s father to Ovid)
Links to the poems quoted in these posts:
- Abu Abdallah Ibn Ghalib Al-Rusafi: Ashiyin Raiqin
- John Agard: Flag
- Yehuda Amichai: Jerusalem
- Yehuda Amichai: God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children and here
- Maya Angelou: Human Family and here
- Maya Angelou: Still I Rise and here
- Maya Angelou: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
- Maya Angelou: On the Pulse of the Morning
- Guillaume Apollinaire: The Sighs of the Gunner from Dakar [Extract]
- Ibn Arabi: Wonder
- Yehuda Amichai: The Place Where We Are Right
- Yehuda Amichai: God has pity on kindergarten children
- Yehuda Amichai: Wildpeace
- Simon Armitage: Sea Sketch
- Simon Armitage: Remains
- Simon Armitage: In Avondale
- Simon Armitage: Considering the Poppy
- Simon Armitage: A Vision
- Simon Armitage: The Convergence of the Twain
- Simon Armitage: Zoom!
- Matthew Arnold: Dover Beach
- Margaret Atwood: The Immigrants
- Margaret Atwood: Asparagus
- W.H. Auden: Musee des Beaux Arts
- W.H. Auden: Address To The Beasts
- W. H. Auden: The Unknown Citizen
- W.H. Auden: Voltaire at Ferney and here (extract)
- WH Auden: In Memory of WB Yeats (extract)
- WH Auden: Bucolics, II: Woods (extract)
- WH Auden: Refugee
- Mohamed Raouf Bachir: I Am A Refugee
- Matsuo Basho: summer grasses
- Frances Bellerby: All Soul’s Day
- John Berger: Earth
- John Berger: They Are The Last
- James Berry, Benediction
- James Berry, Fantasy of an African Boy
- Wendell Berry: To Enrich the Earth
- Wendell Berry: What We Need Is Here and here
- Wendell Berry: The Peace of Wild Things and here
- Wendell Berry: Sabbaths (extract)
- Wendell Berry: The Vacation
- John Betjeman: Harvest Hymn
- Norman Bissell: Lichen Circles
- Elizabeth Bishop: Brazil, January 1, 1502
- Elizabeth Bishop: The Moose
- William Blake: Jerusalem
- Eavan Boland: White Hawthorn in the West of Ireland
- Hans Børli: The Little Flute ( Den lille fløyten)
- Hans Børli: Autumn Night in the Mountain Woods ( Hostnatt pa Fjeliskogen)
- Hans Børli: The Tree That Grows Upside Down (Treet som vekser opp-ned)
- Hans Børli: Rock Salt ( Saltstein)
- Hans Børli: Whispers in the Cotton Grass (Sus i myrull)
- Hans Børli: A Moment of Stars ( Stjernestund)
- Hans Børli: It Is One of Those Nights ( Det er ei slik natt)
- Hans Børli: The Moose Heart ( Elghjertet)
- Hans Børli: Have You Listened to the Rivers in the Night? ( Har du lyttet til elvene om natta?)
- Hans Borli: Memories
- Bertold Brecht: A Worker Reads History
- Bertolt Brecht: To Those Who Follow in Our Wake
- John Burnside: On ‘The Cornfield’ by John Nash
- Lord Byron: Darkness
- CP Cavafy: Ithaca
- Paul Celan: Death Fugue
- Paul Celan: Black Flakes
- Herman de Coninck: Last Post
- Constantine Cavafy: Poseidonians
- Constantine Cavafy: Ithaca
- Amy Clampitt: Beach Glass
- John Clare: The Nightingale’s Nest
- John Clare: The Thrush’s Nest
- John Clare: The Pettichap’s Nest
- John Clare: The Badger
- John Clare: The Dandelion
- John Clare: The Sycamore
- John Clare: To a Fallen Elm (extract)
- John Clare: Remembrances (extract)
- John Clare: Wood Pictures in Autumn
- John Clare: Wood Pictures in Summer
- John Clare: The Redcap
- John Clare: The Moors (link)
- John Clare: To a Fallen Elm (link)
- John Clare: The Blackbird’s Nest (link)
- John Clare: I Am
- Thomas A Clark: The One Hundred Thousand Places
- Thomas A Clark: The One Hundred Thousand Places
- Thomas A Clark: The One Hundred Thousand Places
- Thomas A Clark: Forest Without Trees
- Thomas A Clark, The Path to the Sea
- Thomas A Clark, The Path to the Sea
- Thomas A Clark: The Grey Fold
- Stephen Crane: A Man Said to the Universe
- Leonard Cohen: Hallelujah
- Leonard Cohen: Anthem
- Marianne Cohn: I Shall Betray Tomorrow
- Rita Cordon: Lost
- Rita Cordon: From the Window
- Rita Cordon: At The Canal
- EE Cummings: i carry your heart with me
- Myrddin ap Dafydd: A Language is Nothing but Words
- Mahmoud Darwish: Under Siege
- Mahmoud Darwish: Identity Card
- Mahmoud Darwish: We have on this earth what makes life worth living
- Idris Davies: Gwalia Deserta (extracts)
- Idris Davies: Marx and Heine and Dowlais
- WH Davies: Leisure
- Cynan Evans-Jones: Aberdaron
- Vivian de Sola Pinto: In The Train
- Emily Dickinson: I Reason, Earth is Short
- Emily Dickinson: Indian Summer
- Emily Dickinson: Indian Summer
- Emily Dickinson: The Dandelion’s Pallid Tube
- Emily Dickinson: A Soft Sea Washed Around the House
- Emily Dickinson: As if the Sea Should Part
- Emily Dickinson: There is no frigate like a book
- John Donne: No Man is an Island and here
- Mark Doty: Migratory
- Carol Ann Duffy: Politics
- Carol Ann Duffy: The Words Of Poems
- Carol Ann Duffy: Poet for our Times
- Carol Ann Duffy: Prayer
- Carol Ann Duffy: Mrs Darwin
- Carol Ann Duffy: Mean Time
- Carol Ann Duffy: Mrs Lazarus
- Carol Ann Duffy: Premonitions
- Carol Ann Duffy: Your School
- Carol Ann Duffy: The Maiden Names
- Carol Ann Duffy: Safe Sounds
- Carol Ann Duffy: Night Writing
- Carol Ann Duffy: Glad
- Carol Ann Duffy: The Twelve days of Christmas 2009
- Carol Ann Duffy: Birmingham: for Tariq Jahan
- Paul Laurence Dunbar: Sympathy
- Abou-Al-kacem El-chebbi: To the Tyrants of the World
- Abou-Al-kacem El-chebbi: If the People Wanted Life One Day
- T.S. Eliot: The Wasteland
- T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets, Little Gidding
- T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets, East Coker
- T.S. Eliot: The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock
- T.S. Eliot: Journey of the Magi
- TS Eliot: from Preludes
- Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Snow Storm
- Christine Evans: Llyn
- Christine Evans: Braich y Pwll
- Christine Evans:Enlli
- UA Fanthorpe: Earthed
- UA Fanthorpe: BC:AD
- UA Fanthorpe: Rising Damp
- UA Fanthorpe: Water Everywhere
- Lawrence Ferlinghetti: The Dog Trots Freely and here
- Erich Fried: French Soldiers Mutiny 1917
- Robert Frost: Mending Wall
- Robert Frost: Sand Dunes
- Robert Frost: A Brook in the City
- Robert Frost: The Sound of Trees and here
- Katherine Gallagher: The Year of the Tree
- Louise Gluck: Odysseus’ Decision
- Yvan Goll: Requiem for the Dead of Europe
- WS Graham: The Thermal Stair
- Ivor Gurney: Photograph
- Ivor Gurney: Trees
- Ivor Gurney: To His Love
- Ivor Gurney: First Time In
- Ivor Gurney: The Silent One
- Ivor Gurney: Laventie
- Ivor Gurney: Towards Lillers
- Michael Hamburger: Oak
- Peter Handke: Song of Childhood
- Thomas Hardy: A Dream or No
- Thomas Hardy: At Castle Boterel
- Thomas Hardy: After A Journey: Pentargon Bay
- Thomas Hardy: Beeny Cliff
- Thomas Hardy: The Caged Goldfinch
- Thomas Hardy: The Blinded Bird
- Michael Harper: Dear John, Dear Coltrane
- David Harsent: Icefield
- Olav Håkonson Hauge: The River Murmurs
- Olav Håkonson Hauge: It’s the Dream
- Seamus Heaney: from The Cure at Troy and here
- Seamus Heaney: Alphabets
- Seamus Heaney: Lightenings viii
- Seamus Heaney: Song
- Seamus Heaney: In Memoriam Francis Ledwidge, killed in France July 31 July 1917
- Adrian Henri: Love Is…
- Adrian Henri: Tonight at Noon
- Matthew Hollis: Landlock
- Thomas Hood: November
- AE Housman: A Shropshire Lad
- AE Housman: Here Dead We Lie
- Ted Hughes: A Swallow
- Ted Hughes: Swifts
- Ted Hughes: Woodpecker
- Ted Hughes: The Laburnum Top
- Ted Hughes: October Dawn
- Ted Hughes: The Thought Fox; The Thought Fox
- Ted Hughes: Work and Play
- Ted Hughes: The Badger (from What Is The Truth?)
- Ted Hughes: Coming Down Through Somerset
- Ted Hughes: Bridestones
- Ted Hughes: Wind
- Ted Hughes: That Morning
- Ted Hughes: Full Moon and Little Frieda
- Ted Hughes: Six Young Men and here
- Eileen Carney Hulme: Indian Summer
- Kathleen Jamie: The Tree House
- Kathleen Jamie: The Dash
- Kathleen Jamie: Ospreys
- Kathleen Jamie: The Overhaul
- Kathleen Jamie: Even the Raven
- Kathleen Jamie: Stane-raw
- Mike Jenkins: Quarrying for Cymraeg
- Pauline Johnson: The Lifting of the Mist
- Philip Johnson: High Wood
- R Gerallt Jones: Hillforts in Llyn
- Ibrahim Ibn Khafaja: O Andalusin
- Kapka Kassabova: Preparing for the Big Emptiness
- Jackie Kay: Old Tongue
- Jackie Kay: Darling
- John Keats: To Autumn
- John Keats: Ailsa Craig and here
- Rudyard Kipling: The Glory of the Garden
- Rudyard Kipling: Magna Carta
- Richard Lambert: The Magnolia
- Philip Larkin: Aubade
- Philip Larkin: I Remember, I Remember
- Philip Larkin: Going, Going
- Philip Larkin: This Be The Verse
- Philip Larkin: High Windows
- Philip Larkin: The Mower
- Philip Larkin: The Trees
- Philip Larkin: The Whitsun Weddings
- Philip Larkin: MCMXIV and here
- DH Lawrence: Fig
- Edward Lear: Dingle Bank
- Francis Ledwidge: In France
- Francis Ledwidge: Soliloquy
- Primo Levi: Shema
- Primo Levi: To My Friends
- Gwyneth Lewis: The Mapmaker’s Song
- Alfred Lichtenstein: Prophecy
- Alfred Lichtenstein: Leaving for the Front and here
- Christopher Logue: Lithe girl, Brown girl
- Christopher Logue: Know Thy Enemy
- Christopher Logue: I Shall Vote Labour
- Christopher Logue: Foreword to New Numbers
- Christopher Logue: Be Not To Hard (aka September Song)
- Christopher Logue: The Chorus of the Secret Police
- Christopher Logue: War Music (excerpt)
- Michael Longley: The War Graves
- Michael Longley: Wounds
- Sahir Ludhianvi: The Taj Mahal
- Norman MacCaig: The Shore Road
- Norman MacCaig: Toad
- Norman MacCaig: November night, Edinburgh
- Norman MacCaig: Climbing Suilven
- Norman MacCaig: A Man in Assynt
- Norman MacCaig: Notes on a winter journey
- Norman MacCaig: A.K. Macleod
- Norman MacCaig: London to Edinburgh
- Norman MacCaig: Ringed plover by a water’s edge
- Norman MacCaig: Sound of the sea on a still evening
- Norman MacCaig: Stonechat on Cul Beg
- Norman MacCaig: Humanism
- Norman MacCaig: Landscape Outside and In
- Norman MacCaig: On a beach
- Ewart Alan Mackintosh: Recruiting
- Ewart Alan Mackintosh: In Memoriam: Private D. Sutherland Killed in Action in the German Trench
- Louis MacNeice: Snow
- Louis MacNeice: Fanfare for the Makers
- Louis MacNeice:The Suicide
- Louis MacNeice: Prayer Before Birth
- Louis MacNeice: from Autumn Journal
- Louis MacNeice: The Sunlight on the Garden
- Derek Mahon: The Banished Gods
- Derek Mahon: A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford
- Derek Mahon: The Thunder Shower
- Osip Mandelstam: We Live Without Feeling
- Osip Mandelstam: The Cage
- Gerard Manley-Hopkins: Binsey Poplars
- Frederic Manning: Grotesque
- Patrick McGuinness: Blue
- WS Merwin: Elegy for a Walnut Tree and here
- WS Merwin: Place
- WS Merwin: Rain Light
- WS Merwin: Trees
- Czeslaw Milosz: Eyes
- Czeslaw Milosz:Campo dei Fiori
- Adrian Mitchell: To Whom It May Concern (Tell Me Lies About Vietnam)
- Edwin Morgan: The Sheaf
- Andrew Motion: The Sorcerer’s Mirror
- Andrew Motion: The Five Acts of Harry Patch
- Andrew Motion: What Is Given
- Les Murray: Ariel
- Les Murray: The Meaning of Existence
- Les Murray: The Emerald Dove
- Mzwakhe Mbuli: Ijuba
- Howard Nemerov: The Blue Swallows
- Pablo Neruda: Keeping Quiet
- Grace Nichols: Wherever I Hang
- Grace Nichols: Hurricane Hits England
- Norman Nicholson: Beck
- Norman Nicholson: The Megaliths
- Norman Nicholson: Sea to the West
- Leslie Norris: His Father, Singing
- Naomi Shihab Nye: Kindness
- Naomi Shihab Nye: Gate A-4
- Sean O’Brien: Essay on Snow
- Mary Oliver: August
- Mary Oliver: Humpbacks
- Mary Oliver: Wild Geese and here and here
- Mary Oliver: Gannets
- John Ormond: Ancient Monuments
- George Orwell: On a Ruined Farm near the His Master’s Voice Gramophone Factory
- Alice Oswald: Written some time between the Month of May and the Month of May Not
- Alice Oswald: Dart (excerpt)
- Alice Oswald: Memorial (excerpt); (excerpt)
- Alice Oswald: Another Westminster Bridge
- Wilfred Owen: Futility and here
- Wilfred Owen: The Send-Off
- Wilfred Owen: Anthem For Doomed Youth
- Wilfred Owen: Dulce et Decorum Est
- Wilfred Owen: Strange Meeting
- Dorothy Parker: Indian Summer
- Nii Ayikwei Parkes: Barter
- Nii Ayikwei Parkes: Our Love is Here to Stay
- Giovanni Pascoli: The Fallen Oak
- Brian Patten: You come to me quiet as rain not yet fallen
- Brian Patten: Little Johnny’s confession
- Don Paterson: Waking with Russell
- Don Paterson: The Thread
- Tom Paulin: Killed In Crossfire
- Mario Petrucci: Heavy Water: a poem for Chernobyl
- Kathleen Raine: Nameless Islets
- Kathleen Raine: Water
- Charles Reznikoff: Holocaust (extracts)
- Adrienne Rich: What Kind of Times Are These
- Rainer Maria Rilke: Eighth Duino Elegy [extract]
- Robin Robertson: Asparagus
- Isaac Rosenberg: Break of Day in the Trenches
- Isaac Rosenberg: Dead Man’s Dump and here and here
- Isaac Rosenberg: August 1914
- Isaac Rosenberg: In the Trenches
- Isaac Rosenberg: Returning, We Hear Larks
- Isaac Rosenberg: On Receiving News of the War
- Michael Symmons Roberts: Scrap Metal
- Michael Symmons Roberts: In Praise of Flaking Walls
- Michael Symmons Roberts: Abyss of Birds
- Peter Robinson: Otterspool Prom
- William Roscoe: The Nymph of the Dingle
- Christina Georgina Rossetti: Silent Noon
- Carl Sandburg: Nocturne Cabbage
- Carl Sandburg: Dream Girl
- Carl Sandburg: Grass and here
- Siegfried Sassoon: Morning Express
- Siegfried Sassoon: Aftermath and here and here
- Siegfried Sassoon: Suicide in the Trenches
- F. R. Scott: Villanelle For Our Time
- Anton Schnack: Nocturnal Landscape
- Giorgios Seferis: The House Near the Sea
- Giorgios Seferis: Epiphany
- Giorgios Seferis: The Return of the Exile
- Yamaguchi Seishi: summer grasses
- William Shakespeare: Sonnet 18 (Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day)
- William Shakespeare: Sonnet 54
- Jo Shapcott: Uncertainty is not a good dog
- Jo Shapcott: I Go Inside the Tree
- Jo Shapcott: Phrase Book
- Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias
- Percy Bysshe Shelley: Ozymandias
- Nan Shepherd: Achiltibuie
- Warsan Shire: no-one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark
- Lyubov Sirota: Burden
- Lyubov Sirota: To Pripyat
- Patti Smith: Qana
- Gary Snyder: Burning the Small Dead
- Gary Snyder: For the Children and here
- Edith Södergran: The Land That Is Not and here
- Edith Södergran: The Big Garden
- Edith Södergran: A Strip of Sea
- Edith Södergran: Triumph of Being
- Charles Sorley: When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead
- Wallace Stevens: The Snow Man
- Arseny Tarkovsky: There Has to be More
- Sara Teasdale: Swallow Flight
- Sara Teasdale: There Will Come Soft Rains
- Justine Tennant: Norra Lorra Otters
- Alfred Lord Tennyson: The Brook
- Edward Thomas: Ash Grove
- Edward Thomas: After Rain and here
- Edward Thomas: A Private
- Edward Thomas: As the Team’s Head Brass
- Edward Thomas: In Memorium (Easter 1915)
- Edward Thomas: March
- Edward Thomas: Old Man
- Edward Thomas: The Combe
- Edward Thomas: Fifty Faggots
- RS Thomas: The View From The Window
- RS Thomas: Nant Gwrtheyrn
- RS Thomas: West Coast, extract
- RS Thomas: Retirement, extract
- RS Thomas: Welsh Landscape
- RS Thomas: The Small Window and here
- RS Thomas: The Bright Field and here and here
- RS Thomas: The Labourer
- RS Thomas: The Island
- RS Thomas: The Village
- RS Thomas: Arrival
- RS Thomas: The Hill Farmer Speaks
- RS Thomas: A Marriage
- RS Thomas: The Other
- RS Thomas: Pilgrimages
- Helen Tookey: Prints
- Helen Tookey: At Burscough, Lancashire
- Tomas Tranströmer: Further In
- Tomas Tranströmer:Further In
- Tomas Tranströmer: Allegro
- Tomas Tranströmer: Tracks
- Tomas Tranströmer: Prelude
- Tomas Tranströmer: The Name
- Tomas Tranströmer: Alone
- Tomas Tranströmer: On the Outskirts of Work
- Tomas Tranströmer: The Light Streams In
- Tomas Tranströmer: The Half-Finished Heaven
- Arthur Tessimond: Not Love Perhaps
- Arthur Tessimond: Silent Cinema
- Arthur Tessimond: The British
- Giuseppe Ungaretti: Vigil
- David Vogel: There Is a Last, Solitary Coach
- Derek Walcott: Earth
- Ionna Warwick: Stalin’s Moustache
- Harri Webb: The Land
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox: Untitled
- Sam Willetts: Garden
- Miller Williams: Compassion
- T Arfon Williams: Foam
- T Arfon Williams: Quarry
- William Carlos Williams: Queen Anne’s Lace
- William Carlos Williams: Winter Trees
- William Wordsworth: Lines Written a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey
- William Butler Yeats: The Wild Swans At Coole
- William Butler Yeats: The Second Coming
- Yevgeny Yevtushenko: Babi Yar
- Youssef Abu Yihea: I Am Syrian
- Liao Yiwu: Massacre
- Hedd Wyn: from Hero
- Adam Zagajewski: Try To Praise The Mutilated World and here
- Benjamin Zephaniah: The British (serves 60 million)
- Benjamin Zephaniah, Talking Turkeys
That's How The Light Gets In 