One can hardly negotiate the course of the year without having to honour a World Day of Something or Other. This March there are at least 25 of them… Kicking off with the well-intentioned World Compliments Day on the first and signing the month off on with the practical (if a little boring) World Backup Day on the 31st.The Spring Equinox on the 20th of March brings us both World Happiness Day (ahhhh!) and also World Oral Health Day (also ahhhh!). But for Oxford, coined ‘the city of dreaming spires’ by Mathew Arnold in his lament for a departed friend, perhaps World Poetry Day on 21 March has a special significance.
The city’s colleges can claim an impressive alumnus of poets. Shelley got himself expelled from University College. Oscar Wilde fledged from Magdalen, as did John Betjeman and Gerard Manley Hopkins, with Betjeman often writing verse about the beauty of Oxford itself and Hopkins loving it so much he later returned to serve the city as a priest. Phillip Larkin and Robert Graves studied at St John’s (the latter becoming Oxford Professor of Poetry), and Wendy Cope was a graduate of St Hilda’s.
So what is World Poetry Day and why does it matter?
It all started back in 1999 when the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (yes it’s a mouthful) felt that all the people on our glittering blue planet needed an annual occasion to reflect on the enduring value of poetry.
It’s hard not to love UNESCO. It has a noble mission, and that’s to promote education, science and culture and so foster communication, peace and understanding worldwide. It protects beautiful places and animals. It advocates for equality and the sharing of knowledge. In a time of global upheaval and division, that’s a rather wonderful thing.
The mission to promote the importance of poetry is a likewise noble cause. Because although many of us can remember sitting in stuffy classrooms trying to make sense of even stuffier poetry, we shouldn’t let it occlude the fact that poetry has the ability to delight, disrupt and sow dissent. Pretty powerful stuff. Besides which, all of us at some point have fallen under its sway at one time or another, whether from the iambic pentameter of a Shakespearean love sonnet, the lyrics of Bob Dylan, or a rude limerick about a man who swallowed a packet of seeds. (No I’m not going to recite it here.)
World Poetry Day doesn’t mean that we all have to suddenly know our villanelles from our haikus – our allegories from hyperboles – or that we should be able to recite a poem about daffodils by Wordsworth off by heart. But perhaps it is a good time to consider poetry’s rich history and celebrate its power to shock, outrage and delight.
It’s fair to imagine that the oral tradition of poetry probably began as far back as the Stone Age, when some eager storyteller had to keep their audiences hooked around the cave fire, and discovered that giving words rhythm and rhyme worked a treat. We know for sure that epic poetry was so popular to the people of Mesopotamia, that they bothered to carve The Epic of Gilgamesh’s take on friendship, adventure, loss and immortality on stone tablets around 5,000 years ago.
And the obsession with epic poems continued in Hellenic and Roman cultures with Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid penned about the wars of Troy alike. Detailing acts of great heroism, they also brimmed with searing accounts of hubris and betrayal, and criticised the immense human cost and moral ambiguity of military power.
The Middle Ages also used poetry as a medium to disrupt social, religious and political attitudes of the time with the use of humour and irony through the satirical tales of Geoffrey Chaucer and Dante. Chaucer may have been rather prurient in his recounting of the Wife of Bath’s sexual proclivities, but Dante was so critical of politics, ecclesiastic corruption and societal immorality it led to his expulsion from Florence.
During the Renaissance, love poetry became overwhelmingly popular with the invention of the Petrarchan sonnet so successfully employed by Shakespeare. Often used to describe courtly love in royal and aristocratic circles, poems like John Dunne’s To his Coy Mistress also encouraged distinctly less courtly sexual seduction. Meanwhile the commoners delighted in mocking the upper classes and each other with lewd and bawdy doggerel by the likes of John Skelton.
With the Age of Enlightenment, Georgians poets found themselves ready for a more universally accessible form of poetry written in everyday language, which blended legend, wild nature and ethereal beauty together with themes from common life. Coleridge wove fantastical morphine-fuelled dreams of marooned mariners, whilst his friend and rival Wordsworth criticised the industrial age and modern society's disconnection from nature.
The Victorian era may be viewed as moralistic and straight-laced, but it was brimming with scientific and industrial innovation and poetry was no exception. Tennyson and Elizabeth Barrett Browning explored faith, doubt and critiqued social issues with achingly emotional depth and musical language.
The Great War of 20th century saw a searing new kind of verse written by combatants like Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brookes, and Oxford St John’s Robert Graves who criticised the brutality of armed combat, focusing on the horrors of trench warfare, physical dismemberment, and deep psychological trauma. Female poets, too, found their voice: Charlotte New and Mary Borden focused on of the role of women on the home front and in field hospitals, highlighting themes of lost innocence, disillusionment and grief.
The swinging 60s brought angry verses spat by the Beat Generation, the cut-up poems of William Burroughs and the deeply dark confessionals of Sylvia Plath. Oxford St Hilda’s Wendy Cope, whilst often humorous in her poetry from the 70s, nonetheless wrote about profound battles with depression, a theme which grew more frequent as success allowed her to focus on her internal struggle.
Derek Walcot busied himself with reimagining Homer in St Lucia in the 90s, winning the Nobel prize, whilst Dr Dre was honing rap in Compton before championing the likes of Eminem who stratospherically popularised modern Slam Poetry and Hip Hop after the turn of the millennium, giving a powerfully raw voice to the disenfranchised and deprived of Detroit.
Even the present-day Swifties can purchase a copy of the annotated poetry of Tay-Tay and marvel at her universal lyrical appeal when it comes to tales of doomed love. And that sort of brings us up to date. Very sort of.
So if you want to celebrate World Poetry Day in Oxford, there is loads going on…
The Oxford Literary Festival will run multiple poetry sessions at venues including the Sheldonian Theatre and Pusey House, and The Good Foot Poetry Readings will be featuring local and visiting poets. Former World Slam Poetry Champion Harry Baker will be performing his show, Tender, at the North Wall Art Centre and Write Space sessions at The Community Works will be held to encourage local writers.
Possibly the most interactive poetry experience you can have is Poetry on the Bus: City Sightseeing Oxford, which will run tours featuring local poet Andrew Pritchard. What’s more, if you fancy turning your hand to writing and performing your own poetry, The Oxford Poetry Library, a mobile community resource, is hosting This is Just to Say Open Mic Night at The Community Works, Park End Street.
So if you are Oxford based, or Oxford-bound this March there are plenty of ways to celebrate World Poetry and get involved…
