Please help me find a poem!!!

[SadUselessMum]

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!

I read jabberwocky when I was in year 10. Was slightly mortified as the only person who actually remembered to bring a poem in my English class but it was well received although that was 20 years ago

Library Ology

I have a date with Su Ling Lee
We’re meeting by the library
At 5 o’clock by history
I’ll show her some mythology
And if we have the energy
We’ll check out some theology
And if there is good chemistry
We’ll dance by musicology
We’ll sail through oceanology
And get some cool lithology
And roundabout psychology
I’ll sweet talk her topology
With science and technology
We’ll have some sociology
And touch each others botany
With organic homoeopathy
She knows so much cosmology
I do luv her ecology
And reading her astrology
I note she has anatomy,
I’ll use my best phraseology
To get her to phonology
So we can lexicology
Together in the library.

Benjamin Zephaniah

You can look at Wendy Cope. She does humorous light verse although some of it has adult themes.

If you want something older and more classic, you could try There Was A Naughty Boy by Keats, which is fun to read out loud.

Lewis Carroll - Jabberwocky, The Walrus and the Carpenter or I’ll Tell Thee Everything I Can

Edward Lear - The Owl and the Pussycat

Hilaire Belloc wrote lots of comic verse for and about children.

It’s not really comic, but “When icicles hang by the wall” by Shakespeare (it’s in Loves Labours Lost) is very accessible and timely with winter coming.

Anything from Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales would be good.

The cat poems - TS Elliott , which the musical
Cats is based upon .

One of Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes, maybe?
Otherwise Brian Bilston, Pam Ayres or Spike Milligan are all great calls.

http://holyjoe.org/poetry/nashA.htm

Silly Old Baboon, Spike Milligan

There was a baboon
Who one afternoon
Said I think I will fly to the sun
So with great palms
Strapped to his arms
He started his takeoff run

Mile after mile
He galloped in style
But never once left the ground
You're going too slow said a passing crow
Try reaching the speed of sound

So he put on a spurt
My God how it hurt
Both the soles of his feet caught on fire
As he went through a stream
There were great clouds of steam
But he still never got any higher

On and on through the night
Both his knees caught alight
Clouds of smoke billowed out of his rear
Quick to his aid
Were the fire brigade
They chased him for over a year

Many moons passed by
Did Baboon ever fly
Did he ever get to the sun?
I've just heard today,
He's well on his way
He'll be passing through Acton at one.

PS – Well, what do you expect from a baboon

He tells her - Wendy Cope

This one might fit the funny and clever brief: "I don't like Poetry" by Joshua Siegel. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/1596010/i-dont-like-poetry

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 take it you already know
of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead – it’s said like bed, not bead.
For goodness sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat.
They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for pear and bear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose
Just look them up — and goose and choose.

And cork and work and card and ward.
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart.
Come, come I’ve hardly made a start.

A dreadful language? Man alive,
I’d mastered it when I was five!

Ag sorry ..just seen you don’t want silly ones.I do love a silly poem.

Love this!

https://poetrybyheart.org.uk/

Has some good examples for reciting… I think it runs the national schools’ competition.

Brian Bilston posted this marvellous poem about punctuation on 24th September.

What is the right length?
Is this poem short
Maybe that is it's strength?

Too long?

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

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

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

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.

John Agard Alternative Anthem?

Dean Atta I want to be a pink flamingo!?

Maya Angelou Still I rise?

John Cooper Clarke I wanna be yours

I really like Kid.

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