Sorry- only just caught up with this again: someone upthread asked about poetry: I think the key thing is to get an anthology from the library or Barnados and read poems from it aloud, (perhaps to dp or dc even) then you will get a feel for what you like, and the rythmn and the sound. Try the metaphysical poets such as John Donne, the romantics such as Tennyson and Shelley, more modern poets such as ts elliott 'the wasteland' ee Cummings and Ted Hughes, as well as the war poets of course. Burns is nice. Anyway, learn one you like by heart and see how you get on. There are all sorts: lewis carroll, william blake, ae houseman, wordsworth, john masefield, and the japanese haiku, funny ones and sad ones, romantic ones and tragic ones. This one seems appropriate for this thread
Ithaka
By C. P. Cavafy
Translated By Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard
As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.