Good Bones Maggie Smith Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from … Continue reading Poetry foundation has shared this poem today – for some reason…

Irish poet Paula Meehan reads one of her earlier works. Despite her becoming in 2013 the Ireland Professor of Poetry by President Higgins, I’ve not come across any of her work before - something I will seek to remedy in the near future! Her Wikipedia page suggests that she is a force to be reckoned … Continue reading POEM – My father perceived as a Vision of St Francis

Mnemonic Thirty days has September, April, June and November. Unless a leap year is its fate, February has twenty-eight. All the rest have three days more, excepting January, which has six thousand, one hundred and eighty-four. Brian Bilston

For Christmas, my mum received a book of poems called Coracle by Jane Clarke. This tiny, beautiful collection contains too many gems to list here, the vast majority focused on the natural world. One of the collection is - at first glance at least - very different. With permission from the poet, I am sharing … Continue reading POEM – Morning Ireland by Jane Clarke

Found on social media, so unsure if accreditation is correct. By video-vendetta Error 404: Your haiku could not be found. Try again later. And rj4gui4r thought it was genius and benedmauglocked said ‘As an English teacher, this made me weep tears of awestruck joy.’

No sun – no moon! No morn – no noon – No dawn – no dusk – no proper time of day. No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, No comfortable feel in any member – No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! – November!  Thomas Hood Kirkstall Abbey looking wet and cold … Continue reading Poem – November by Thomas Hood

Instructions on Not Giving Up Ada Limón More than the fuchsia funnels breaking outof the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’salmost obscene display of cherry limbs shovingtheir cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slatesky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the treesthat really gets to me. When all the shock of whiteand taffy, the world’s … Continue reading POEM – Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limón