Poem for Today - November 08

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November 08

As is appropriate for November, our theme is the supernatural ... living on the edge between life and death, the presence of death in life and of life in death.

Celebrating Halloween, we look at the possibilties for afterlife with Jo Shapcott and, a poet new to the program, the American Dana Gioia. Patricia Beer talks about her relationship with her dead mother in The Lost Woman and the Portuguese poet Sophia de Mello Breyner talks of her late husband's approach to death in The Small Square. While we commemorate the dead of war with Karl Shapiro's Elegy for a Dead Soldier.

Robert Graves bridges the gap from this theme into our celebration of married love with No More Ghosts. Then we have poems to wives from Graves, George Szirtes, W S Graham and - to Shakespeare's wife - from Carol Ann Duffy.

And to husbands or other partners from Sharon Olds, Margaret Atwood, Vicki Feaver and - Sophia de Mello Breyner.

Sadly it looks unlikely that the show will continue to receive funding ... and may have to finish at the end of the year.

Enjoy it while you can ...

November

3	Jo Shapcott Dana Gioia	English American	When I Died All Souls
4	C K Williams Wilfred Owen	American English	Love Beginnings The Mistress Futility
5	Patricia Beer	English	Frost on the Shortest Day The Lost Woman
6	Sophia de Mello Breyner	Portuguese	The Small Square
7	Glyn Maxwell	English	Stargazing We Billion Cheered
10	Jackie Kay	Scottish	Old Tongue
11	Karl Shapiro	American	Elegy for a Dead Soldier
12	William Matthews Hans Magnus Enzensburger	American German	Misgivings The Divorce
13	Arthur Hugh Clough Robert Louis Stevenson	English Scottish	Say Not the Struggle Naught Availeth Requiem
14	Vicki Feaver	English	Glow Worm Riddle
17	Sharon Olds	American	Last Night Beyond Harm
18	Margaret Atwood	Canadian	Variations on the Word Love
19	W S Graham	Scottish	The Constructed Space To My Wife at Midnight
20	Nazim Hikmet C K Williams	Turkish American	A Sad State of Freedom The Hearth
21	Robert Graves	English	No More Ghosts To Sleep Despite and Still
24	Derek Mahon	N Irish	Ecclesiastes The Mayo Tao
25	Isaac Rosenberg Geoffrey Grigson	English English	Returning We Hear the Larks Paddington Street
26	Coventry Patmore Derek Mahon	English N Irish	The Toys Everything’s Going to be All Right
27	Nina Cassian Carol Ann Duffy	Romanian English	Temptation Anne Hathaway
28	William Blake George Szirtes	English Hungarian	The Sick Rose Outside The Birds

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