World Poetry Day 2024

Hi everyone.

Happy World Poetry Day!

According to the “oracle” that is Wikipedia, World Poetry Day has been celebrated every year on 21 March since 1999 when UNESCO set it up with the laudable ambition of “supporting linguistic diversity through poetic expression and increasing the opportunity for endangered languages to be hear.”

But of course, you knew that, right?

The theme for World Poetry Day 2024 is “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants”. It’s intended to remind us how famous poets from the past have helped make poetry important in different cultures and paved the way for others to follow.

What do you mean "Poetry doesn't have to rhyme"?!

So, just in case you need a gentle reminder as to who some of those famous poets are, here are some opening lines to poems from a few very famous poets (sadly all male but that’s a whole other blog post) although they are all from Western culture and predates anything written since the mid 1960s. This is entirely due to my age, my ignorance and my A’Level English syllabus.

Give yourself one point if you guess the poet correctly (without looking at your phone or other device!) and another if you can remember the title of the poem. Answers are at the end of this post.

1. Let us go then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherised upon a table;

2. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

3. ‘You are old, Father William,’ the young man said,

‘And your hair has become very white;

And yet you incessantly stand on your head -

Do you think, at your age, it is right?’

4. That Whitsun, I was late getting away:

Not till about

One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday

Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out.

5. The King asked

The Queen, and

The Queen asked

The Dairymaid:

‘Could we have some butter for

The Royal slice of bread?’

6. What passing-bells for those who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

7. Do not go gentle into that good night.

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

8. It’s awf’lly bad luck on Diana,

Her ponies have swallowed their bits;

She fished down their throats with a spanner

And frightened them all into fits.

9. Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close-bosom friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;

10. Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

And here are the answers:

1. T. S. Eliot (The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

2. W. H. Auden (Stop All The Clocks)

3. Lewis Carroll (Father William)

4. Philip Larkin (The Whitsun Weddings)

5. A. A. Milne (The King’s Breakfast)

6. Wilfred Owen (Anthem For Doomed Youth)

7. Dylan Thomas (Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night)

8. Sir John Betjeman (Hunter Trials)

9. John Keats (To Autumn)

10. William Shakespeare (Sonnet 116)

* Give yourself a bonus point if you got the sonnet number correct!