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Please help me find a poem!!!

92 replies

SadUselessMum · 30/09/2024 21:08

My 13 year old daughter wants to read a poem out at school as part of National Poetry Day. This is unheard of as she is normally very shy and would never volunteer for anything!!

So we are very pleased! However…..she has no idea of a poem to read and it’s in 2 days!

She says she wants a funny one but nothing embarrassing. She goes to quite a sensible, mature school so it would need to not be a silly, young one.

Has anyone got any ideas? English is not my first language so poems are a bit of a mystery to me. Any help would be gratefully received!

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Llttledrummergirl · 30/09/2024 23:18

Inhaledfoodohno · 30/09/2024 21:32

Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse (she'll need balls of steel to read that at school)

I was going to suggest this one. I was the quiet shy goody two shoes in school and the gasps when I read it.

It was met with a nod of approval from my very sensible English teacher.

WartOrNot · 30/09/2024 23:17

Simon Sebastian Samuel Stone (who was addicted to his telephone)

WitcheryDivine · 30/09/2024 23:16

I agree - don’t make her read out a babyish poem. I love Billy Collins eg this one: https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/introduction-to-poetry/ or check out Man in Space by him.

she might enjoy Edna St Vincent Millay who was a prize winning poet as a teenager

Introduction To Poetry - Introduction To Poetry Poem by Billy Collins

Read Introduction To Poetry poem by Billy Collins written. Introduction To Poetry poem is from Billy Collins poems. Introduction To Poetry poem summary, analysis and comments.

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/introduction-to-poetry

YourLastNerve · 30/09/2024 23:10

Green eggs and ham. Dr Seuss.
Or one of the Roald Dahl ones

Ffs she is thirteen!!

AmadeustheAlpaca · 30/09/2024 23:03

I think The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost or Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening, also by Robert Frost would be good. Lots to discuss. Or, maybe ten or so lines from The Ancient Mariner. Some of the suggestions here seem more appropriate for a younger child.

CoughedBulldozerNumber · 30/09/2024 23:02

One of TS Elliott's Cat poems. I did Macavity at that age (long before I had even heard of the Musical version)

Or one if Hillaire Belloc's cautionary ones like Jim (who was eaten by a Lion) or Henry King

MrsSkylerWhite · 30/09/2024 22:52

Be Glad Your Nose is on Your Face, by Jack Prelutsky
or
Little Red Riding Hood by Road Dahl?

twinmum2007 · 30/09/2024 22:50

Green eggs and ham. Dr Seuss.
Or one of the Roald Dahl ones.

ChiffandBipper · 30/09/2024 22:48

Oh, the places you'll go by dr Seuss.

YourLastNerve · 30/09/2024 22:47

A Coat by wb yeats. Short

BogusHocusPocus · 30/09/2024 22:42

Albert and the lion.

TheElectricCity · 30/09/2024 22:41

How about The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost?

YourLastNerve · 30/09/2024 22:41

You're by sylvia plath?

Mama2many73 · 30/09/2024 22:40

There's a wonderful extension of the
'sticks and Stones may break my bones'
Poem, which talks about how words cut like a knife and stay with you. I'll post it if I can find it again.

Sorry! thought it said 'not funny' !! Re read it!
Michelle Rosen is a good shout.

meganorks · 30/09/2024 22:35

Look in 'A light in the Attic' by Shel Silverstein. Lots of funny, silly (and sometimes quite sweet) poems to choose from

Mykittensmittens · 30/09/2024 22:34

Something with alliteration which makes it interesting for the reader and the listener. What about ‘the night mail’ by W H Auden’? It’s a pleasure to read out loud at the pace which makes it sound just like a train in motion. The first section sounds just like the clacking of trains on the line then there is a pause and the second half delivered at a different pace, then repeat. There are lots of you tubes of it being read out for example of how it should be read.

————

This is the night mail crossing the Border,
Bringing the cheque and the postal order,

Letters for the rich, letters for the poor,
The shop at the corner, the girl next door.

Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb:
The gradient's against her, but she's on time.

Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder,

Snorting noisily as she passes
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses.

Birds turn their heads as she approaches,
Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches.

Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course;
They slumber on with paws across.

In the farm she passes no one wakes,
But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes.

Dawn freshens, Her climb is done.
Down towards Glasgow she descends,
Towards the steam tugs yelping down a glade of cranes
Towards the fields of apparatus, the furnaces
Set on the dark plain like gigantic chessmen.
All Scotland waits for her:
In dark glens, beside pale-green lochs
Men long for news.

Letters of thanks, letters from banks,
Letters of joy from girl and boy,
Receipted bills and invitations
To inspect new stock or to visit relations,
And applications for situations,
And timid lovers' declarations,
And gossip, gossip from all the nations,
News circumstantial, news financial,
Letters with holiday snaps to enlarge in,
Letters with faces scrawled on the margin,
Letters from uncles, cousins, and aunts,
Letters to Scotland from the South of France,
Letters of condolence to Highlands and Lowlands
Written on paper of every hue,
The pink, the violet, the white and the blue,
The chatty, the catty, the boring, the adoring,
The cold and official and the heart's outpouring,
Clever, stupid, short and long,
The typed and the printed and the spelt all wrong.

Thousands are still asleep,
Dreaming of terrifying monsters
Or of friendly tea beside the band in Cranston's or Crawford's:

Asleep in working Glasgow, asleep in well-set Edinburgh,
Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
But shall wake soon and hope for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?

Whatabouteryallaboutery · 30/09/2024 22:34

Risk by Anaïs Nin. It wouldn't take her long to recite!

madnessitellyou · 30/09/2024 22:30

HollyGolightly4 · 30/09/2024 21:58

I'm an English teacher, I think a lot of these are too long and not quite right for high school. I think I'd go for one that could be on the curriculum - Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy? Kid by Simon Armitage? It's also black history month- I come from by Dean Atta is gorgeous

I really like Kid.

I cannot stand Duffy, but Valentine is okay! Or Jackie Kay Dusting the telephone?

Makingchocolatecake · 30/09/2024 22:27

John Cooper Clarke I wanna be yours

madnessitellyou · 30/09/2024 22:25

Maya Angelou Still I rise?

madnessitellyou · 30/09/2024 22:24

John Agard Alternative Anthem?

Dean Atta I want to be a pink flamingo!?

Gymrabbit · 30/09/2024 22:23

HollyGolightly4 · 30/09/2024 21:58

I'm an English teacher, I think a lot of these are too long and not quite right for high school. I think I'd go for one that could be on the curriculum - Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy? Kid by Simon Armitage? It's also black history month- I come from by Dean Atta is gorgeous

As a secondary English teacher totally agree with this.
a lot of the suggestions are babyish and cringey. Please don’t get her to recite Milligan or Rosen. And the owl and the pussycat has the line ‘what a beautiful pussy you are’ repeated. It would be social suicide.
I agree about Wendy Cope being good, I think Duffy is a bit intense.
zephaniah is great but unless you are black/mixed race I wouldn’t recite it as it’s written in dialect.
There’s an Armitage one called ‘I am very bothered’ that is pretty good and not too long.

I quite like Brian Bilston but he’s very middle aged in style.

Els1e · 30/09/2024 22:22

My favorite is Leisure by William Henry Davies. "What is this life......"

MadBlack · 30/09/2024 22:19

I think some of these are more suited to getting the humour from reading rather than reciting

Notmydaughteryoubitch · 30/09/2024 22:16

What about People will always need People - Benjamin Zephaniah, really beautiful but light poem and also lovely to recognise him in BHM.

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