National Poetry Day

Wow. Is it so long since I posted? I have been writing, but primarily in the fiction or shanty song writing arena. I still attend the Pub Poets event each month (Marc Grist was our brilliant guest poet at the beginning of October) but for the first time I hadn't prepared anything new. So why this blog entry? The answer is "National Poetry Day" which was a week or so ago. Mid afternoon I thought I'd write something to pop on Facebook, so now it seems opportune to replicate it here.

National Poetry Day

The announcement it's National Poetry Day
makes me wonder, "who said that it's so?"
Was it one of the poets of century's past?
Was it Browning or Wordsworth or Poe?

Was it Shelley or Keats? Was it Blake? Was it Yeats?
Was it Shakespeare who did it for fun?
Was it Dickinson, Tennyson, cummings or Frost?
Was it Kipling or maybe John Donne?

Perhaps the decision was made by a poet
who lived (or lives) nearer our time
There's Spike and there's Pam and there's Roger McGough.
And John Cooper-Clarke likes a rhyme.

And which of the countries around this vast world
would have thought such a day was required?
Well maybe "required" is too harsh of a word.
Perhaps the term should be "desired".

Whoever thought National Poetry Day
was "desired" - they encouraged the bards.
We now simply need to make sure that we own it;
not taken by - say - Hallmark Cards.