Poem of every day: week beginning 6th July
6th July: Rain in Summer by Henry Wandsworth Longfellow
Summer rain after a hot, dry spell is always welcome. Longfellow was enchanted by it, and catalogues the many reasons why we should welcome it. The scope of the poem begins small, with a few raindrops, but expands to cover heaven and earth and the river of Time itself!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wwfO8vx_WE
7th July: Checking out me history by John Agard
On 7th July 1801, Toussaint Louverture became governor-general of Saint-Domingue (later renamed Haiti), having successfully led the enslaved people of the island to freedom. Agard's poem is about Louvertune, but is is also about the fact that the history of marginalized people largely went untaught in British schools.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zqYS1gT9jI
8th July - Miracles by Walt Whitman.
Walt Whitman was associated with the philosophical movement of Transcendentalism, which believed that people were by nature born good. This poem illustrates Whitman's desire to see a spiritual goodness at work in everyday experiences, where anything and everything can start to seem miraculous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tztt2HbODTY
9th July - Travel by Edna St Vincent Millay
Edna St Vincent Millay was a celebrated American poet and a feminist activist, living in the first half of the twentieth century. This short lyric, arranged into three rhyming quatrains, expresses the writer's wanderlust - the desire to travel far and wide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAh7eVMwEXI
10th July The Magic of the mind by Clive Webster
In yesterday's poem, the narrator wanted to travel far away. This poem by Clive Webster is about the power of books and the imagination to make those journeys for us.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXZzoTC70-s
Comment below - which is your favourite?