With only 10 days to go until Poemdemonium, we’re doing our best to keep up with the blogging countdown. We missed yesterday due to work committments and so we could spend time with our families, given that it was Father’s Day. We hope all you Dad’s out there got a Poemdemonium ticket as a present ;). And if you missed out, click here to get one! You won’t want to miss out!
On that note, I thought I’d recommend 10 Poets for you to occupy the rest of your evening with, in no particular order, here we go:
1. Wendy Cope – Nathan actually introduced me to her and she’s brilliant. Quite contemporary which is what I like!
2. Neil Hilborn – Discovered him performing on a Facebook video, fell in love….and he’s performing in Dublin on August 8th (We’re going!).
3. Maya Angelou – I mean there are no words for how good she is…Still I Rise is one of the most popular poems of all time!
4. William Shakespeare – I’m not Shakespeare’s biggest fan but it just felt wrong not to include him given that he basically invented the language.
5. Robert Frost – “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood….”
6. Christina Rosetti – One of the first poems I ever heard was ‘Remember’ and I know it line for line these days…
7. Carol Ann Duffy – Valentine is an insanely good poem by this insanely great poet!
8. Seamus Heaney – I mean I had to include at least one Irish poet…I don’t claim to love him but he has said some pretty powerful things…I don’t think I’ll ever get the line “A four foot box, a foot for every year” out of my head ever…so he deserves to be on the list!
9 & 10. So I’m counting these two together because I discovered them together, both Americans with the same last name but not actually related/married/anything to do with each other except perform poetry. I have shared their videos many many times on my Facebook page and I may even do an entire blog post dedicated to their poetry specifically but I had to put them here…introducing Sarah Kay & Phil Kaye…
So there you have, 10 poets to keep you on your toes! We’ll have many poets at Poemdemonium from a variety of places and we’re looking forward to meeting and hearing all of you in just 10 Days time!
