Happy World Poetry Day 2025 from the ArtfulScribe Team. Below are some selected poems to be read today and beyond, chosen by poets, writers and facilitators who are a part of the ArtfulScribe delivery team.

Joanna Barnard 

'Good Bones' by Maggie Smith

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89897/good-bones

‘I love this poem because it is ultimately hopeful, but doesn't wallow in toxic positivity. There are some really powerful images in it - Smith doesn't avert her eyes from the awfulness in the world - but I love the central conceit that this broken, flawed world is still home.’

Susmita Bhattacharya

‘My Cancer as a Ring-Tailed Lemur’ by Kathryn Bevis

https://poems.poetrysociety.org.uk/poets/kathryn-bevis/

‘My selection is My Cancer as a Ring-Tailed Lemur by Kathryn Bevis. The poem is a personification of a disease as an animal, drawing similarities between the losses each one has to endure. The loss of familiarity and safe environments, the comparison of searching for the tumours through machines and the lemur through the camera lens. Kathryn's exquisite language and observation create a magical description of something that is slipping away, disappearing from sight and yet this sad imagery holds the reader in a trance, experiencing all the emotions through Kathryn's words.’  

Claire Hillier

'A Paradise of Poets' by Jerome Rothenberg

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57153/a-paradise-of-poets 

(from Seedings and Other Poems (New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1996)

‘This poem's simplicity disguises the huge subjects it addresses. Psychosocial, meta-creative, mystical, theological. The speaker is writing in a book that is already written. Re-writing. Overwriting (a warning against colonisation) A dedication to the poets of the future. Each poet writes in an individual voice on top of those who have gone before. The title is included in the poem itself adding to the cyclical form. Referring to classical poetry. Inferno is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century narrative poem The Divine Comedy. The first circle of Hell is called Limbo which is “a paradise of virtuous pagans”. Limbo is unique in Hell because the residents suffer no torment other than their lack of hope. This absence is important because, without hope there can be no faith or charity/love. Collectively it is time 'to write a poem about a Paradise of Poets'.’

Rohan Gotobed

‘Perhaps The World Ends Here’ by Joy Harjo

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49622/perhaps-the-world-ends-here 

‘This poem was a big inspiration for my play 'Getting Closer'. I love how it encapsulates huge existential feelings through an intimate, domestic setting.’

Matt West

‘Leisure’ by WH Davies

https://www.poetrybyheart.org.uk/poems/leisure 

‘This isn’t a favourite poem, but it is a poem that sticks with me and that I repeat to myself a lot. It was a poem my Dad liked and it is on the wall in the office. The line: ‘What is this life if, full of care,/ we have no time to stand and stare-’

I appreciate it because it rings a bell of truth each time I think about it, particularly when hurried and harried through life.’

AJ Hardingson

‘Mairead’ by Rachel Plummer

https://theemmapress.com/shop/childrens/poetry-collections/wain/ 

‘One of my favourite poems for all ages is Mairead by Rachel Plummer. It's the final poem in her book Wain, LGBT reimaginings of Scottish Folklore, which is also beautifully illustrated by Helene Boppert. 

This poem makes me well up every time I read it. It's in many ways a very simple feminist retelling exploring fairytale tropes. But I find it healing, transgressive and permissive. It's empowering. The repetition of the phrase 'This is the way the world is' and how it twists that last time just feels full of so much deep truth to me. And I just love Mairead as a character - I find her so relatable in a way that I don't often see in the fairytale genre. The language is so minimalist, but every word counts and carries so much. The little details are everything. It's a mic drop of a poem.’

Alice Flynn

‘Wild Geese’ by Mary Oliver

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfayiBoaXE8 

‘I love how it speaks to the rawness of life and the simplicity of our inherent belonging. I especially enjoy the natural imagery, the sense of scale and the invitation for us complex humans to return home to our animal body. Nothing to be earned or gained. Simply being.’