The 21st of March is World Poetry Day, where people can learn about different poems from around the world and can appreciate poetry as a relevant rather than old dated art form. Schools can celebrate the day by getting students and teachers to recite their favourite poems; inviting poets into school to perform and discuss their poems; or encouraging students to write their own pieces.
Here are five of my favourite poems that you can read and enjoy on World Poetry Day.
Dulce et Decorum est, Wilfred Owen
Unlike many war poems, Dulce et Decorum est does not celebrate the glory of war or the importance of defending your country. Instead, it conveys an important and very current message about the realities of war. The horror and futility of killing millions of people for an abstract cause. In the last lines, Owen warns us not to believe ‘The old Lie’ that gives the poem its name: “Dulce et Decorum est/ Pro patria mori (It is a sweet and honourable thing to die for one’s country).”
Nothing’s Changed, Tatamkhulu Afrika
The harsh, brash, biting rhythm of this fast-paced poem is filled with anger and frustration at South Africa’s deep-rooted racism, even after the official end of the Apartheid. Despite physical unity between the black and white communities, the narrator knows that mentally “nothing’s changed.”
It also spits out an important accusation at our modern society. Global laws may have freed ethnic minorities from racial oppression but, until individual people can learn acceptance, there will still be inequality.
The Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll
Who says poetry has to be serious? In fact, for Lewis Carroll, best known for the Alice in Wonderland series, poetry can be complete nonsense.
Try understanding his most famous poem, The Jabberwocky, which opens and closes with
“’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.”
But, of course, the genius of Carroll means even gobbledegook is art. Read the poem out loud and you will realise it’s not the words, but how the words sound, that reveals the poem’s meaning.
My Last Duchess, Robert Browning
“That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall,
Looking as if she were alive”
Is a creepy beginning to a creepy poem. Robert Browning, a Victorian poet, was most known for his ‘dramatic monologues’.
Dramatic monologues are perfect for those who prefer books to poems because, like books, a very vivid, complex, and compelling character tells a thrilling story to the reader. Read My Last Duchess and prepared to be terrified by the calculating, clinical, and cold personality of the Duke of Ferrara, and discover the horrifying truth of what happened to his former wife.
Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, Roald Dahl
Saving the best until last, Roald Dahl’s Little Red Riding Hood and The Wolf is one of my most-loved poems.
If you have ever read Dahl’s books, you will know he is a master storyteller, and he puts every ounce of his wit, humour, and ingenuity into a modern retelling of the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale.
Written in bouncing rhyming couplets, this is a perfect poem to read out loud. Get together a group of friends to play the narrator, the grandma, the wolf, and Little Red Riding Hood. If the poem at first seems like any ordinary fairy tale, keep reading – Dahl’s Little Red Riding Hood is not a girl to mess with.
Written by Florianne H.