Accompanying blog post: https://intrepidenglish.co.uk/toms-top-10-poetry-must-reads-part-1/
I know it’s an outrageously big-headed thing to do – to quote yourself – but I was asked by the Poetry Question to write about the power of poetry for their continuous essay series on the subject, and, I wrote, back in 2019, a piece I still very much agree with. I said,
‘The power of poetry is its timeliness. Poetry endures. It survives the wars, the natural disasters, the harshness of aging. It survives foolish kings and queens, prime ministers and presidents, tsars and popes. It survives dictatorships, genocide, corruption. It survives injustice. It survives cancer. Poetry is everywhere, no matter how much you avoid it. Poetry adapts. Poetry attacks. Poetry breathes. Poetry is fluid. Poetry waits...Poetry travels. Poetry is patient. The power of poetry resides with its inability to be defined.’
I quote this not, as they say, to toot my own horn or blow my own trumpet but because it is a good way of summing up my love of poetry and my excitement, therefore, in sharing some of my favourite collections with you. Most of books mentioned below are ones I’ve read in the past five years. I’ve recommended poetry books before, in our very own Novel Writing Course and I can’t not mention our Novels that Changed Our Lives series, in which teachers and students of Intrepid English spoke about the books that shaped them in some way.
Book recommendations are among my favourite things to give. I, myself, am a poet and am constantly consuming different voices and deconstructing the construction of language. So, here is the first part of my ten poetry must-reads.
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