Who’s your poetry hero?

Today is National Poetry Day in the UK. This year’s theme is heroes and heroines.

Poetry is of huge importance in my life. I wrote here about a poet whose work allowed me to engage emotionally with my spirituality, and the Psalms are to me one of the most poetic and beautiful (if sometimes barbarically beautiful) elements of the Bible.

If we’re lucky children, our parents sing us to sleep with the poetry of lullabies. I can hear my mother’s voice:

Golden slumbers kiss your eyes
smiles await you when you rise
sleep little baby don’t you cry
and I will sing a lullaby.

I have a list of poets who are my heroes. Among them are: Marge Piercy, Leonard Cohen, Naomi Shihab Nye, Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, Rumi, Hafiz. I’m beginning to explore Yeats.

But in some ways, perhaps it’s more important to celebrate so-called “ordinary” people who write poetry. I always look forward to Christine’s regular poetry parties at Abbey of the Arts. Although my own muse has dried up in recent months, I love reading everyone’s contributions. It makes me realise how very gifted we all are in our different ways. Not ordinary at all.

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So in the spirit of National Poetry Day, please share in the comments who your poetry heroes and heroines are, and why.

Image by clairity

Elsewhere:

The image I’ve used above is of a statue of Phillis Wheatley. In my ignorance I’d never heard of her until today when I was browsing Flickr for photos tagged “poetry”. Brought to America on a slave ship, she was the first published African American woman poet. She was only 31 when she died.

The Poetry Book Society has an excellent little guide “Poetry Testing Kit”  for poetry newbies, by Simon Armitage. I particularly liked this: “The Test of Nerves – somebody once said that a poem shouldn’t just tell you not to play with matches, it should burn your fingers. In other words, does the poem create a sensation, rather than simply an understanding?”