1 - 27 of 27
-
October by Jim Saville, from I-Like-RhymesThe conkers (horse chestnuts to the uninitiated) are falling off the trees and will soon be joined by the leaves. The dark mornings and even darker nights have arrived to make the daily commute to and from work even more depressing. The churches are proclaiming Harvest Festival services and the Christmas advertisements have started to appear. This is October.
A wonderful month of rich bright colours, full store houses and, just to stop us getting carried away with euphoria, thoroughly miserable weather - When I was a youngster and, occasionally, listening to what my teachers would tell me, there were a lot of certainties in the things they would say. Not the least of these pronouncements were about what they called poetry, My English teacher, or should that be “teacher of English” believed in three types of writing; Poetry, Prose and Poetic Prose. The later was a category that had something of both the others but was definitely outside both of them. The whole panoply of play writing fell into that catch-all grouping as well as certain other, less easily definable pieces.
-
Poetic Christmases by JS, from I-Like-RhymesNot everyone celebrates Christmas but for most it is still a time of festivity. Here are a few poetic examples of the season through the eyes of various writers.
Though naturally Christmas, above all things, should be a celebration of the birth of Christ himself yet it has taken upon itself many different messages for different people over the years. For some those meanings are a private thing shared, at most with a few people, and for others it is something to be shared with the world. -
Born on the 20th August 1881 Edgar Albert Guest became one of the most popular American poets of his generation with a daily poem of his being syndicated in newspapers across the states for almost fifty years.
-
Happy Birthday William H Davies by Jim S, from I-Like-Rhymes“What is this life if full of care
We have no time to stand and stare?”
Possibly the most famous couplet of the past hundred years was written by William Henry Davies -
I have been reading and editting a lot of Yorkshire Dialect poetry of late, especially the work of Dorothy Una Ratcliffe and John Hartley, and am building up a dictionary to help with this rather than keep referring to several books and sites.
To save time and to help other readers I am posting it here.
As with any dictionary it cannot hope to be complete and the meanings can vary with time and place. - Fighting Men was a thin volume of poems published by Elkin Mathews in 1916.
-
When I was young and reading and writing was a chore I had to endure I would encounter ideas and phrases that I would never meet in ‘real’ life. Phrases such as “look-ed o’er” instead of the more prosaic overlooked; “treads the fields of Elysium” instead of dead, and hundreds more.
-
Poets Laureate.
Who are they? What are they? read on... -
ALL THE OTHER CHILDREN is a wonderful book by Miss Cicely Fox Smith that contains black and white pictures of a variety of animals common in England and a few others seen on her travels.
Each is accompanied by a brief commentary on appearance or habits of the creature concerned and a few are also accompanied by one of Miss Fox Smith’s poems. The author was assisted in the preparation of this book by her sister Madge Scott Smith. - An old tradition that remains as popular as ever.
- We should not decry the writing of vernacular poets simply because they do not write in standard English.
-
SAILOR TOWN ----- OLDPOETRY LINKS by Jim Saville, from I-Like-RhymesThis set of links is provided to assist readers in finding their way around the poems contained in Cicely Fox Smith's Sailor Town that are reproduced on the Oldpoetry Web-site.
It is a work in progress and more links will be added until the full book is referenced.
JS - The main volume used was Small Craft by Cicely Fox Smith was published by George H. Doran Co., New York, US, © 1919,
-
There are over 6,000 poets and nearly 60,000 poems on the oldpoetry website and if I had to pick 7 for myself I would choose the following.
- Contents of the Foremost Trail by Cicely Fox SmithPublished by Sampson Low, Marston & Co., London, UK, (c) 1899,One of M
- Shanties usually bring up the image of a bunch of sailors hauling on ropes on board a sailing ship and that's not wrong, however it is not the whole story.
-
##
- ##
-
##
- ##
-
*
* - People say that rhymes are not necessary, that they take the reader's mind away from the subject, that they are just a quick fix for bad poetry;
-
Since those distant beginnings there have been millions of words written on the subject. Many of those in the form of great poetry.
- The Duke of Edinburgh's Award started in 1956 as a scheme for teen-aged British boys. As it approaches it's fiftieth anniversary it has become an international
1 - 27 of 27
