National Poetry Day is here, and with it a celebration of the fine tradition of learning poems by heart. With this year’s event centring on the theme “remember”, the Forward Arts Foundation have been encouraging everyone to share the poem they carry in their head. In parallel, Cambridge University is launching a survey, called The Poetry and Memory project, to find out which poems are most deeply engraved in our collective memory, and how they are remembered.
Are you any good at remembering poems? Is there a poem which has stuck from your time at school? What are the poems you remember, and why? Let us know in the comment thread below or, even better, follow the lead of the dozens of readers who’ve already sent us their poems. Here is a selection of our favourites so far. You can also join in the campaign on social media under the hashtag #thinkofapoem.
hpsmissbradley performs Untitled by Simon Armitage. She learned this poem for GCSE English, she explains, and “fifteen years later, I’m now teaching it in my classroom as one of my favourite poems about childhood”.
“It helped to fuel my love of poetry, Armitage in particular,” she continues. “I just love the way he plays with language; his very deliberate choices give the poem an uncomfortable, awkward air.”
Calum Jacobs went for Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130:
Rosie Edge chose The Sick Rose by William Blake: “I remember this poem as, my name being Rosie (or Rose to some), certain friends used to incant the first line whenever I had a slight cold ... I then used to see it regularly as one of the Poems on the Underground. It kind of stuck.”
Our young reader Cecil recited The Duck by Ogden Nash: “I think this poem is really fun and we have ducks in our pond outside,” said their parent Cosima14:
Rachel Kitching recites The Soldier, by Rupert Brooke: “I learnt this by accident because I fell in love with the poem in an inherited book at the age of ten. I love it still. Poor Rupert.”
Gustav Nordeborn went for humour, reciting Slough by John Betjeman:
Sarah Rose Anna Goss chose Danny Lives On by Benjamin Zephaniah: “Zephaniah was one of the first poets I experienced as a child and definitely the one I liked and still like the most. He inspired my love of poetry and opened my mind to so many things. I have known this poem by heart for as long as I can remember.”
BethanAL recites Siren Song by Margaret Atwood, and says: “I love the rather cynical take on relationships.”
Harry Burton recites A Story that Could Be True by William Stafford, “a shortish (but deep) poem about the mythic possibilities all humans carry within them for a rich and exciting life”:
Carrie Aaron recites Helas by Oscar Wilde. “I’ve known this poem for over ten years,” she says. “It’s the only poem I know off by heart. It was the first in my collection of the works of Oscar Wilde. Thus, I chose to memorise it quite by random.”
Stephen Marsh goes for Paradise Lost, Book III, lines 1-55, by John Milton: “This part always stops me in my tracks when reading through the poem. Hauntingly, mournfully beautiful lyric.”
ChristyL recites Vitai Lampada by Sir Henry Newbolt: “This isn’t even slightly my favourite poem, but I learned it with my grand-father 50 years ago.”
Check out the very fine recitations that didn’t make it to the piece here.
