World Poetry Day #2 - No Dead Poets; My Favourites
As part of my Poetry module I have to study a whole range of poetry styles and forms, but in our seminars we follow one rule; No Dead Poets. As I’m sure you’d imagine, we’ve wandered from this once or twice, and I definitely will for my list, but I think that this is something that needs to be discussed. Contemporary poetry isn’t really taught in GCSE literature classes which inevitably leads to young people feeling rather vehemently against poetry. Yet poetry can be so much more than the traditional sonnets or the dark imagery produced by Blake or Coleridge. What I’ve learnt since September is that poetry can genuinely be written about anything. We’ve had so much fun writing poetry within our group at university, coming up with some really beautiful imagery, from the extended metaphor of a bakery talking about marriage equality, and an exceptional rant about feminism to deep and meaningful poetry surrounding bereavements within families, to the absolutely absurd with a brain in a jar on the dining room table. Poetry has so much room for personal expression. Poetry doesn’t even need a form or a structure; half the time it doesn’t even need to make a whole lot of sense, and yet it might just spark someone’s interest. This is why I love poetry.
Dead Poets - Lets get these out of the way first. These are poets that I love who I know are dead but who I really enjoy reading their work still
Alan Ginsberg - Howl
Jack Kerouac - Daydreams for Ginsberg
Shakespeare - To Be or Not To Be (Hamlet)
Thomas Hardy - Beeny Cliff
Alive Poets
Anis Mojgani
John Dorsey - The Bride of Frankenstein
Rhian Edwards
Kate Tempest - Brand New Ancients
Melissa Lozada-Olivia
Neil Hilborn
Kate Rokowski
This list is not exclusive obviously! There are so many others that I love but this is a pretty good start for people who want to look into poetry. Many of these are performance poetry which is something that I really love. If there are any others that you think I’d enjoy feel free to leave comments below! Enjoy World Poetry Day!
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