Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
What poem do you know by heart? #nationalpoetryday
So it seems, listening to Radio 4 Today this morning, that our grandparents were not being tortured by sadistic schoolteachers when forced to learn poetry by heart but were given a valuable gift that stays with them even when other faculties may have gone.
Alas, I was of the generation where although we read poetry and often quite difficult poets, we weren't forced to recite the whole of Upon Westminster Bridge to a class of our bored peers, more's the pity. These days, it appears, its even worse. Children use poetry as a comprehension exercise without ever really spending time just reading it out aloud.
However, I did learn one poem off by heart which I can recite to my small ones...The Owl and The Pussycat. It's the only one though.
Which poems could you confidently recite off by heart? Even just to yourself in a quiet moment? Or would like to learn?
Today is National Poetry Day.
As ever, we remind ourselves of Harringay's very own poem and of our very own poet Michael Donaghy whose wife Maddy has recently published a memoir of him called The Great Below - a journey into loss
Happy Poetry Day. Maybe this is the time I start learning Upon Westminster Bridge...
Bonus track - Listen to Alan Bennett on Philip Larkin
Tags for Forum Posts: national poetry day
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by james walsh on
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Mrs Dighty
In her nightie
Walking in the dark
Trod upon
A puppy dog's tail
And made the creature bark.Mrs Dighty
In her nightie
Let the puppy go
By lifting up
Her instep
And raising her
Big toe.
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Permalink Reply by Sam R on
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Silly Old Baboon by Spike Milligan
There was once a baboon
Who one afternoon
Said I think I will fly to the sun
So with two great palms
strapped to his arms
he started his takeoff run
Mile after mile
He galloped in style
But never once left the ground
You’re going too slow said a passing crow
Try reaching the speed of sound
SO
he put on a spurt
My God how it hurt
both the soles of his feet caught on fire
As he went through a stream
There were great clouds of steam
But he still never got any higher
On and on through the night
both his knees caught alight
clouds of smoke billowed out of his rear!!!
Quick to his aid
Came the fire brigade
who chased him for over a year
Many moons passed by
Did Baboon ever fly
Did he ever get to the sun?
I’ve just heard today,
he’s well on his way
He’ll be passing through Acton at one.
PS – well, what do you expect from a baboon
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Permalink Reply by Lauren on
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’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
He took his vorpal sword in hand;
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!”
He chortled in his joy.
’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Ok, I copy/pasted that to save typing it out, but it's the only poem I remember off by heart. It always pops into my head at the least appropriate opportunity...
...along with Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick (I know it's a song not a poem) which I stood up and recited in front of the whole school (aged about six) because I couldn't think of a poem when asked to recite my favourite :)
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I'm with you on the Jaberwocky, I wonder how many generations had to learn it at school, also the 'Mouse's Tale' and 'Mock Turtles Song'. There were no end of little rhymes, often a sign of the times, such as "Food for the four of us, Thank God there are no more of use, Little enough for two of us and one of us could have ate it" and "One ,two, three, Mother caught a flee........."
Then another golden oldie, Lears "The Owl and the Pussy Cat", but nothing written in the last 60 years unless you count lyrics and then the possibilities are endless.
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Until about ten minutes ago I thought I could still recite all 70+ lines of Lawrence's 'Snake'. Alas, when I tested myself, I found that whole chunk about cowardice and voices of my education had evaporated like Ed Miliband's Deficit.
I'm still up to Yeats's Fiddler of Dooney, Lake Isle of Innisfree, and An Irish Airman Foresees his Death.
Shakespeare's Sonnet 73, That time of year thou mayst in me behold, still survives fairly intact with me - three appropriately extended metaphors for OAE's disappearing faculties, one might say. And of course Frost's The Road Not Taken will stay with me as long as I need an excuse for why I got myself stuck on Wightman Road.
Oh and another thing: lots of Limericks after the fashion of 'There was an old man of Madras / Whose balls were made out of brass etc.' - learnt from my Tamil teaching colleague from Sri Lanka. Now those Indian literary vandals have renamed it Chennai. What the hell rhymes with that?
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Permalink Reply by Julia on
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In Xanadu did Kubla KhanA stately pleasure-dome decree:Where Alph, the sacred river, ranThrough caverns measureless to manDown to a sunless sea.[It all goes hazy after that though!]
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Indeed Julia it went pretty hazy for Coleridge a few dozen lines later. I've always found that pesky persons from Porlock consistently disturbed my best work too.
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Permalink Reply by Bethany Burrow Atherton on
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I was sitting in the sitting room,
Toying with some toys,
When from a door marked "Gruesome"
There came a gruesome noise.Cautiously, I opened it
And there, to my surprise
A little grue sat sitting
With tears in his eyes"Oh little grue, please tell me
What is it ails thee so?"
"Well, I'm so small," he sobbed,
"Grue-esses don't want to know!""Exercises are the answer.
Each morning you must do some."
He thanked me, smiled, and do you know what?
The very next day, he grew some!
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Permalink Reply by Sapphireblue on
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Oh as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
about the lilting house and happy as the grass was green
time let me hale and climb golden in the heydays of his eyes
and honoured among wagons
I was prince of the apple boughs ...etc
Dylan Thomas
...that's straight off the top of my head, always my favourite poet. Today I performed on the Covent Garden piazza with a list of other poets organised by the National Poetry Society - we did one poem each on the theme Remembering.. I'll post mine up later ... 'Gallipoli', about my gransfather.
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Permalink Reply by Alison P on
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Futility by William Owen
I learnt this at primary school and almost managed to type it out correctly (but not quite!).
Move him into the sun
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown
Always it woke him, even in France
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.
Think how it wakes the seeds -
Woke once the clays of a cold star
Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides
Full nerved, still warm, too hard to stir
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
to break earth's sleep at all?
And a more recent one - Love that boy by Walter Dean Myers. This is the only bit I know by heart:
Love that boy,
Like a rabbit loves to run.
I said I love that boy
Like a rabbit loves to run.
Love to call him in the morning,
Love to call him
"Hey there son".
There is a fantastic story based on this poem called Love that Dog by Sharon Creech.
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Permalink Reply by Mark Smith on
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I know a bit of Vogon poetry:
"Oh freddled gruntbuggly,
Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop, I implore thee, my foonting turlingdromes,
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts
With my blurglecruncheon, see if I don't!"
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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This week's Guardian poem of the week is by Michael Donaghy (mentioned above). It's a good 'un
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