World Poetry Day is celebrated on 21 March and the date was designated by UNESCO in 1999 in order to promote the reading, writing, publishing and teaching of poetry throughout the world. So, what does poetry mean to you?
As a child, even though I was an obsessive bibliophile, my knowledge of poetry was restricted to the somewhat limited offering given to me in primary school: the odd bit of Wordsworth, a modicum of Keats and Rossetti’s ‘In the Bleak Midwinter’ because this was set to music and was a carol favoured by the much-feared Headmistress. It was not until I was 15, studying the War Poets, that I discovered Wilfred Owen, falling in love with his works and poetry per se. I can still recite ‘Anthem from Doomed Youth’ verbatim and, from his oeuvre, I learned a great deal about critical analysis and prosody, especially the unique beauty of the pararhyme. From that literary epiphany, I then went on to become a devotee of Seamus Heaney and a TS Eliot obsessive: these literary loves have persisted for over thirty years, despite my infatuation with Thomas Hardy’s prodigious output – over 1000 published poems- and the magnificence of John Donne. ‘Famous Seamus’ needs no introduction; he was, at the time of his death, the most renowned poet in the world- and rightly so. However, I would like to state that although Eliot is better known by some as the author of poems that formed the musical Cats, his The Waste Land, published in 1922, is the most extraordinary poetic tour de force in the English language. I have studied it endlessly, taught it numerous times, yet still feel that I have merely scratched the surface of its multiplicity of meanings. Therefore, on March 21st, I will raise a glass to Eliot and will re-read The Waste Land for probably the fiftieth time, marvelling at the sheer audacity of its polyglottal nature, celebrating its elusiveness and how it defies definition. No ‘helpful’ online site can fully encapsulate its essence, and we are all the better for that. Shantih, shantih, shantih!