Manchester based publishers Puppywolf are inviting submissions for the Best of Manchester Poets Volume 3. This got us thinking, what poems do we have hidden away that might bring a smile to your face? The first is remarkable apt for this gloriously sunny day…
“Lines Written on the Sea Shore”, Mary Catherine, 1851.
‘I love to watch thee, when the setting sun
Is shedding his bright glow and parting smile,
And as he sinks to rest, his journey done,
Still paints thee with his rose-lined clouds awhile:
Then, then ungentle thoughts, oh placid sea!
Are hush’d to peace by thy tranquility’
The next comes courtesy of William Wordsworth, ‘Odds and Ends’ a handwritten magazine produced by St Paul’s Literary and Educational Society from the 19th & 20th Century opens with the lines;
‘If thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven,
Then, to the measure of that Heaven-born light,
Shine, Poet! In thy place and be content’.
Next up also from ‘Odds and Ends’, 1946, handwritten poems and musings on John Keats by Muriel Luckman.
“I stood tip-toe upon a little hill”, John Keats, 1816.
‘I stood tip-toe upon a little hill,
The air was cooling, and so very still,
That the sweet buds which with a modest pride
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside,
Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems,
Had not yet lost those starry diadems
Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.
The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn,
And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept
On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept’
She goes on to say ‘ If you enjoy poems full of lovely music, vivid pictures and a strange haunting beauty and sadness, then you will a deep happiness that you cannot quite explain, in the poems of John Keats’.
Manchester Libraries hold some fantastic poetry books including The Nation’s Favourite Poems with a foreword by Griff Rhys Jones.Have you ever wondered who is Blur Bassist, Alex James favourite poet? If so we have the video for you.
Or better still who is the Nation’s favourite poet? The BBC have the answer…
