Just finished ‘Later Life Letter’ by @lukewrightpoet.bsky.social An outstanding collection, I love how the poems speak to each other Poems that sometimes leave you forgetting in ‘in-breath’ after the ‘out-breath’ Posting this reflecting on yesterday’s poem about marriage #poetry #poemoftheday

The title suggests not romance, but endurance & adaptation That love is not given but something that is built repeatedly. It is unfinished and collaborative. The optimist in me reads the final line as a fire of passion rather than of survival. #poetry #poemoftheday

This is essentially one extended sentence. After the colon it opens into a list, an inventory of affection that feels spiritual in tone It directly contradicts the Romantic idea of poetic immortality I also love short northern nights, when darkness never fully settles #poetry #poemoftheday

I've been in workshops with debates about commas & line breaks, rather than shouting ‘YES YES’ at the emotional gravity of a poem “I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks seconds before becoming daisies” PS there's craft in this, but it still interrupts you #poetry #poemoftheday

‘Poems are toys’ but it could also be said that children’s words & thoughts are poems When my kids were young I recorded what they said & made poems of their words. I gave the poems back to the authors in handwritten books on their 18th birthdays #poetry #poemoftheday #seamusheaneysunday

Marianne Moore's ultimate lesson in redrafting. Several versions published over 50 years. The final cutting the original 31 lines to 3. I think, rather than lines lost or meaning changed, they all speak to each other. The 3 line version, though, is my favourite. #poetry #poemoftheday #amediting

Francis Harvey meditates on hope, futility, and the human impulse to intervene in forces beyond our control. The act of calling down rain becomes something larger than weather. It’s about standing beneath an empty sky and refusing despair. #poetry #poemoftheday

Berry turns the language of bureaucracy into something quietly terrifying by asking questions escalating in horror The poem is 60 years old but feels like it could have been written yesterday. By the end there's a feeling you’re not being questioned, you're being measured. #poetry #poemoftheday

Had the pleasure of spending the evening with Fiona Benson and hearing her share some poems from her collection Midden Witch The collection is wonderful but listening to her read, the words lifted off the page and soared #poetry #poemoftheday

Following the wedding poems from a couple of days ago Sometimes you don't pay enough attention to the title of a poem. Then you get to the last few lines and then they catch you like this one by Jasmine Cooray The restraint in the 1st 2 stanzas and then it opens up #poetry #poemoftheday

Maura Dooley draws on the Egyptian afterlife ritual in which the dead person’s heart is weighed against a feather to determine moral worth Her poem is not documentary, but metaphorical On the scales the weight of accumulated memory & of loss; a weighing of what we carry #poetry #poemoftheday

Two companion poems today, one ‘uncollected’ & one from Wintering Out’ The attention shifts from the usual focus of a wedding, the bride & groom, to the parents There is gentleness & love in these poems but also a profound sense of loss & grief #poetry #poemoftheday #seamusheaneysunday #wedding

W H Auden (1939) responding to the rise of fascism The final couplet is brutal and brilliant The juxtaposition of laughing & crying, his tears are not empathy but triggers of violence Not naming the tyrants make this feel less like history, more like prophecy #poetry #poemoftheday #AntiFascist

Dionisio D. Martínez riffing off the Charlie Parker song fuses poetry & jazz with memory & desire Imagery of smell and touch. Shifts in tempo & a sense of transcendence. Underpinning it all the word ‘almost’ ‘All blues, I said. Blues and whatever shadows are made of’ #poetry #poemoftheday #jazz

We have no grand metaphors, just an insistence to say where we come from without shame. The plain and direct language is the emotional core of the piece He acknowledges facing your past is difficult and that the bravest thing is not reinvention, but recognition. #poetry #poemoftheday

This poem by Howard Nemerov poses a question often asked and answers it by allowing form and imagery to make the case That there is an indistinguishable point when one becomes the other What is clear though is he believes, when defined, poetry flies and prose falls #poetry #poemoftheday

Today is #RandomActsOfKindnessDay This poem filled with incredible imagery reminds us that to experience kindness in its fullest that we must be at our sorrowful emptiest It is then that kindness will find us If you are not empty let your kindness, find one who needs it ❤️ #poetry #poemoftheday

Recently I shared a poem about Frederick Douglass Hayden’s poem, different but equally good A sonnet with the 1st 10 lines breathlessly racing to the caesura in line 11. Then the turn giving the brilliant final few lines 'When it is finally ours...' #poetry #poemoftheday #blackhistorymonth

In this sonnet Heaney is in conversation with the Billie Holiday song, connecting killings of the past to contemporary ones In a provocative last line, unlike Diodorus who documents ritual killing to explain the past, Heaney uses it to trouble the present #poetry #poemoftheday #seamusheaneysunday

I had the privilege of hearing Michael Longley read this poem at what was his last reading. Enda, his wife of 60 years, was sitting in the 2nd row listening to every word 'dawn and dusk can kiss once a year' Cloudberry kisses #poetry #poemoftheday #valentinesday

This is a ‘warm up act’ to tomorrow’s mandatory love poem. It's almost as good as seeing The Rollins Band support The Red Hot Chili Peppers! Seriously though, aside from the incredible imagery, the use of enjambment does something mesmerising to the pace of the poem. #poetry #poemoftheday

I love how poetry plays with language I found this on my favourite poetry podcast – Poetry Unbound The plurality in meaning is a joy. But the poem is more than word play, it's sonically brilliant & the tonal register is slightly different depending on how you read it #poetry #poemoftheday #vegan

Glad to be home after two nights of eating in restaurants alone. I like how this poem finds meaning in a quiet, ordinary moments. There is also a paying of attention, a joy in noticing what is often missed when you are not alone #poetry #poemoftheday

Spent the best day with super talented colleagues from various ethnic heritages, helping them achieve their potential despite the daily barriers they face Here Leontia Flynn remembers a true hero, Frederick Douglass Proud we have his statue in Belfast #poetry #poemoftheday #blackhistorymonth

I find myself nodding in agreement. Not everyone is left standing the war has ended & also the notion that some of those left standing have been irrevocably changed by their experience But there is hope for a better future and an urgency to fight for what we might never see #poetry #poemoftheday

From ‘Stations’ a ‘Sliding Doors’ poem I wonder what would have happened if he hadn’t won the scholarship? Would all of those poems have been lost? On such small events worlds can shift The benches on which he sat are now quite empty, circles are broken #poetry #poemoftheday #seamusheaneysunday

This is from Matthew Rice’s collection ‘Plastic’. A microcosm of working class life set in a single 12 hour factory night shift. It is an astonishing book, its acute observations are at times stark and bleak, at other surreal, funny and humane #poetry #poemoftheday

Ada Limón reflects on growing up with divorced parents and reframes the difficulties and challenges with gratitude for a twice lived experience I think this also speaks of her dual nationality, rather than being one/other/neither, there is something to treasure in being both #poetry #poemoftheday

Michael Hartnett's Irish woman is a metaphor for Ireland A political elegy addressing the loss of culture, language & tradition. It isn’t nostalgia, it’s evidence The line ‘I loved her from the day she died’ pulls you up before he moves into the final 6 perfect images #poetry #poemoftheday

After the Brookes poem I shared recently a conversation developed about the impact of unconventional line endings This poem by Anne Carson was mentioned The lines endings & the use of punctuation is incredible. Also note the omission of the greatest threat to wolves ❤️🐺 #poetry #poemoftheday

My father worked in the Belfast Shipyard. My grandfather too, he helped build the Titanic As a boy I remember him coming home soaked, standing in front of the fire, steam rising off him I wonder were there days, before I came along, when my mother greeted him like the poet #poetry #poemoftheday

Threaded through this calm list of ordinary pleasures is a single, ominous word 'otherwise' It reminds us that everything we enjoy exists only provisionally As well as being a celebration of the day this is also a meditation on what might have been or could be tomorrow #poetry #poemoftheday

There is a ecological aspect to this poem from ‘Wintering Out’. I love ‘forests coopered to wine casks’ But it also speaks of colonial erasure of culture and language And I am grateful, despite of this, to be witnessing cultural rewilding #poetry #poemoftheday #seamusheaneysunday #rewilding

Poems make you laugh and then they make you cry. This was the man that once inhabited the empty shirt that hugged Tess Gallagher in the poem I shared a few days ago. To have written something as poignant as this, having received such news, I find it incredible. #poetry #poemoftheday

That's my reading sorted for a few days. New work by Matthew Rice, Fiona Benson and @lukewrightpoet.bsky.social Just need to decide where to start #poetry #AmReading

Poetry doesn’t always have to be deep, or angry, or thought provoking, or sad Sometimes it needs to be fun, to make you smile This poem by Meg Cox from her collection ‘A Square of Sunlight’ does just that. And perhaps behind that smile a little recognition… #poetry #poemoftheday

This, from Lemm Sissay’s collection ‘Listener’, is a masterclass in pace and rhythm and rhyme. It is a read it out loud kind of poem. It is playful, funny, poignant, and deep all at the same time. #poetry #poemoftheday

Speaking to a friend after yesterdays poem about acts of kindness about a conversation he had with a waiter where he took time & care to engage in genuine dialogue & how much this was appreciated Being kind might not change the world but might change the world for one person #poetry #poemoftheday

Going out to give blood tonight I am reminded of this poem How insignificant acts of kindness can mean the world to the recipient. The impact of the accumulation of kindness That if we are kind often enough our kindness will find someone who really needs it #poetry #poemoftheday #giveblood

It feels like at the moment every day could be a Langston Hughes kind of day. ‘Clutching at a moment while you control an hour’ The poem ending on the image of the flower, but not flowers that are growing, flowers that are laid #poetry #poemoftheday

I ♥️ this poem & am reminded of Sheena Wellington’s beautiful voice “A Man's A Man For A' That", at the official opening of the Scottish Parliament on 1st July 1999. www.youtube.com/watch?v=hudN... #RobertBurns #BurnsNight

Noting the day that it is and sharing my favourite Burns poem My eye are drawn today, in particular, to the third stanza Happy Burns Night to all 'That Man to Man, the world o’er, Shall brothers be for a’ that' #poetry #poemoftheday #burnsnight

Such music in this sonnet The last line circles to the first & reminds me of the Ukrainian woman who gave seed packets to Russian soldiers so wildflowers will grow where they die Remember today the courage that's needed to stand against those better armed #poetry #poemoftheday #seamusheaneysunday

I love the line breaks in this by Gwendolyn Brooks, the softening of the ‘we’ gives the poem almost a jazz backbeat rhythm. There is also great tension in the short lines as well as the language That last line still starkly true 60 years later #poetry #poemoftheday

This from Meadowlands, which uses the Odyssey as a conceit to tell the story of deteriorating marriage. There are 3 broken hearts There is the detachment of not taking sides, but also the detachment of time – the speaker looking back as an adult and seeing things differently #poetry #poemoftheday

This, a parody of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 55, is a counterpoint to yesterday's poem - beauty, love and verse will be forgotten. Also connecting to my other recent posts by Galleymore & Olzmann addressing eco-poetics. Some of her predictions have already come to pass #poetry #poemoftheday #sonnet

Imagine these Elizabethan sweethearts enjoying a beach walk & Spenser stopping to write her name in the sand (maybe inside a heart!) Her rebuke (feisty for the time), & his reply, even after death their love & his verse will live on Today these words are still strong #poetry #poemoftheday #sonnet

Here we have a square sonnet, 14 lines & 14 words in each line, but each time the order of words changes Challenging Cage's philosophy regarding silence & the idea that all sounds, even "nothing," can be music That poetry that's saying nothing is saying something #poetry #poemoftheday #sonnet

A poem for #bluemonday Check in with the people you care about, ask how they are, #asktwice, and listen to their answer #poetry #poemoftheday #ItsOkNotToBeOk #mentalhealthmatters

From Death of a Naturalist this addresses darker & uncomfortable elements of rural life, but also speaks of colonial violence ‘I just shrug, bloody pups. It makes sense’ a reminder that when violence becomes commonplace, it becomes acceptable #poetry #poemoftheday #SeamusHeaneySunday