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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!

OP posts:
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7
Whatabouteryallaboutery · 30/09/2024 22:34

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

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?

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

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.

YourLastNerve · 30/09/2024 22:41

You're by sylvia plath?

TheElectricCity · 30/09/2024 22:41

How about The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost?

BogusHocusPocus · 30/09/2024 22:42

Albert and the lion.

YourLastNerve · 30/09/2024 22:47

A Coat by wb yeats. Short

ChiffandBipper · 30/09/2024 22:48

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

twinmum2007 · 30/09/2024 22:50

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

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?

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

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.

YourLastNerve · 30/09/2024 23:10

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

Ffs she is thirteen!!

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

WartOrNot · 30/09/2024 23:17

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

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.

Purplebunnie · 30/09/2024 23:24

I sit beside the fire and think - Tolkien - may be too short

I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.
I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring there is a different green.
I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago,
and people who will see a world that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.

Bilbo's Last Song - Tolkien

Day is ended, dim my eyes,
But journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the sea.

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

Guided by the Lonely Star,
beyond the utmost harbour-bar,
I'll find the heavens fair and free,
and beaches of the Starlit Sea.
Ship my ship! I seek the West,
and fields and mountains ever blest.
Farewell to Middle-earth at last.
I see the star above my mast!

Also I sit beside the fire and think - Tolkien
As far as I am concerned these are the only ones worth remembering, I don't get on with the rest of Tolkiens poetry

DD1 did Macavity and Jabberwocky there was also another child who did the poem about two raindrops racing down the window pane - sorry can't remember the name but it was good

There is also Goblin Market by Christina Rosetti

SoMentallyDrained · 30/09/2024 23:26

OP thank you for starting this thread. I'd forgotten how much I love poetry and now can't wait to introduce my DCs to it!

Purplebunnie · 30/09/2024 23:32

Sorry repeated myself I meant the Road goes Ever on - Tolkien

I just can't think of any other poems at the moment, I used to know so many. Old age I'm afraid

forcliffssake · 30/09/2024 23:34

How about The Arrow and The Somg by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?

Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

WitcheryDivine · 30/09/2024 23:34

Also check out Hollie Mcnish on Instagram, she’s brilliant. Do get your girl to read poetry by women as well as men. I found it important as a teenager and still now. Hope she finds something she loves x

Sgtmajormummy · 30/09/2024 23:37

The Cremation of Sam McGee is a rattling rhyming ghost story of a poem, good for Halloween.
She could listen to Johnny Cash reciting it on YouTube.

LunaNorth · 30/09/2024 23:43

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver
Havisham by Carol Ann Duffy
Medusa by Carol Ann Duffy
The Thought Fox by Ted Hughes
Mirror by Sylvia Plath
To Autumn by John Keats
Hope is the Thing with Feathers - Emily Dickinson

A range of lengths and themes there, OP!

AmadeustheAlpaca · 30/09/2024 23:53

I'm fond of "Upon the Hearth the Fire is Red" by Tolkien, it's not too long and I like the ideas in it of travelling and seeing the world but enjoying going home to your own bed.
Good luck OP with finding a poem for your daughter, some good suggestions.

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