By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Work is a big part of our lives – like sleep, and love, and eating – yet it doesn’t strike us, perhaps, as immediately ‘ripe’ material for poetry, perhaps because we like to view poetry itself (wrongly, in the main) not as ‘work’ but as a ‘calling’ or a ‘hobby’. Yet many of the great and the good from English-language poetry have treated the subject of work in their poems – below are ten of the best.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
The poetry of Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-42) is that rare thing: both of interest from a historical perspective (he lived through one of the most interesting periods of English history) and genuinely innovative and stylistically accomplished. Here are ten of Thomas Wyatt’s best poems, with some information about each of them.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
There are plenty of clichéd love poems out there which are popular at weddings, but what if two lovebirds want to find something a little more original and honest for their big day? These 11 unsentimental poems are among the best non-clichéd poems in English literature, expressing fine sentiments without being overly sentimental or cheesy.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Insects – flies, beetles, fleas, and the like – may not seem like an obvious subject for poetry, but in fact they’re flying and crawling everywhere in English verse, as this selection of ten of the greatest insect poems attests. If you have your fly-swatter at the ready, dive in among the insects and enjoy these ten classic entomologically inclined poems.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
W. B. Yeats (1865-1939) was a prolific Irish poet, but what were his best poems? It’s going to prove difficult to restrict our choices to just ten of Yeats’s greatest poems, as there are bound to be notable absences from our list. Nevertheless, all ten of the poems listed here give an insight into the most prevalent themes of Yeats’s poetry.