By Maria Millers
For many, bruised by school experience, poetry is still some old fashioned literary form found in foxed and faded pages of books on bottom shelves in op shops or in boxes of deceased estate garage sales.
But poetry is well and alive, still in books, but equally online and in performance. Its form being the right fit for today’s busy lives – and not only for older people.
Performance or Slam Poetry with its ranging subject matter is engaging more and more younger people like never before.
Today’s poem, Daffodils, is one that most people have heard and may remember the opening lines. Set in spring in England’s Lake District- it’s a celebration of nature and how it affects us emotionally and at the same time it shows how healing nature can be.
Though an exotic plant, daffodils are also associated with the coming of spring in Australia, and from August the Hills are covered with patches of daffodil blooms, while at the same time our native Wattle blazes above – a wonderful example of the exotic and the native coming together to announce with such brilliance of gold that spring has arrived.
In this column I will be bringing you many examples of different poetry, from poetry about love and nature to poetry about war, loneliness and a whole range of human experiences and emotions.
As poet Carol Ann Duffy has said “You can find poetry in your everyday life, your memory, in what people say on the bus, in the news or just what’s in your heart”- maybe now she would have also added ‘on social media.’
I hope to bring you back to enjoy this vibrant form and maybe you too will soon be reading, writing and entering the Woorilla Poetry Prize. Also please write and let me know your favourite poem and why.
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud – By William Wordsworth
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
Maria Millers is a radio journalist, creative writing teacher and editor, past publisher of Woorilla Magazine and founder of the Woorilla Poetry Prize
The Woorilla Poetry Prize for 2023 is now accepting entries. Please visit www.woorilla.org.au for more information.
