The Poem's the Thing

All things poetic.

[Democritus Sr @DemocritusSr]

Rainer Maria Rilke, “Before the Summer Rain” (“Vor dem Sommerregen”, “New Poems”, tr. Edward Snow) #poetry

[Democritus Sr @DemocritusSr]

Percy Bysshe Shelley – Poems can’t be willed (“A Defence of Poetry”)

[Anne Rouse @rouseanne]

Andrew Neilson's Little Griefs owes its considerable effects to quiet skill and a mastery of tone. A strong debut here - I was moved both by its precision and its poignancy.

[Bloodaxe Books @BloodaxeBooks]

We're delighted to announce that Joanna Lowry has won the Mslexia Women's Poetry Pamphlet Competition 2025 for her debut pamphlet The Man Whose Brain Turned to Glass.

The winning pamphlet will be co-published by @BloodaxeBooks & @mslexia in September.
https://t.co/CqA7QY3Jyx

[Bret van den Brink @BretVDB]

“Love is a universal migraine,
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.

Symptoms of true love
Are leanness, jealousy,
Laggard dawns;

Are omens and nightmares—
Listening for a knock,
Waiting for a sign:

For a touch of her fingers
In a darkened room.”

—Robert Graves, “Symptoms of Love”

[Eric T. Racher @Eric_T_Racher]

Ben Jonson
Why I write not of Love

[Andrew Neilson @neilsonandrew]

Poetry reading. In June. In London. Super company. Please join us. 🙏

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

T S Eliot's English translation of St John Perse's Anabase was published #OTD in 1930.

The translation was published side by side with the original French, 'so that readers may judge for themselves of the merit and accuracy of the translation, and of the beauty of the original.'

[Penny Pepper @PenPep]

Chapter near ending,
But hesitation tangles
Like broken branches.

Stop. Start. Pause. Rewrite?
The point of view side shifting –
New flowers to bloom?

It hovers, held up
Between logic and instinct –
Let this seed flourish!
#WriterLife #DisabledLife
#Haiku #WritersWednesday
#WIP

[don paterson @donpatersonpoet]

wee poem in LRB this week

https://t.co/LjrvFhFbvR

[don paterson @donpatersonpoet]

So very sorry to have had to reschedule this morning’s Heaney webinar - now on the 23rd May, when I plan not to have a vestibular migraine. Today’s tickets valid, of course.

https://t.co/Ux8o3C2goA

[Andrew Williams @andreweighteen]

Really looking forward to this night for Roddy Lumsden on 12th June. All are welcome, whether you're an old pal of RCL or know his work from @BloodaxeBooks or @ByLeavesWeLive

Free tickets and more info --> https://t.co/PdpudbRjoZ

[T. S. Eliot Foundation @eliotfoundation]

‘The poetry of a people takes its life
from the people’s speech and in turn gives life to it'

From Eliot's introduction to his series of Charles Eliot Norton Lectures delivered at Havard University between November 1932 and December 1933.

#tseliot #poetry #theuseofpoetry

[C.P. Cavafy @CCavafy]

“Ithaca gave you the beautiful journey.”

– C.P. Cavafy was born #OTD April 29, 1863. He died on his 70th birthday, April 29, 1933.

“Ithaca”, translated by @DAMendelsohnNYC

#poetry #cavafy

[mary @elaine_stritch]

April is also National Poetry Month and this is a Gwendolyn Brooks poem that I keep close to my heart and think of often

[buy Fenestration @Othuke__Umukoro]

—Anne Carson, O Small Sad Ecstasy of Love

[Isidro Li @isidro_li]

Sappho (translated by Guy Davenport)

[Cian McCarthy @arealmofwonder]

"And the May month flaps
its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk."
~ Thomas Hardy, 'Afterwards'

[Writing on the Wall @wowfest]

On the 14th May @JTaylorTrash brings Maryville to WoWFEST and @liverpoolphil a searing staged reading excavating 50 years of lesbian counterculture.

📍 Philharmonic Music Room
🎟️ £11

https://t.co/RONGh3MPlU

#WoWFEST26 #JoelleTaylor

[Kathryn Gray @KathrynGray]

Happy Birthday, Cal.