By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Poets have written about houses, palaces, museums, towers, churches, and much else besides. Below, we introduce ten of our favourite poems about buildings and structures of various kinds. From sacred spaces to haunted houses, these buildings feature in some of the finest poems on the subject – but are there any classic poems we’ve missed off the list?
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
It was the Romantics who really showed us the strange, haunting power of a ruined castle or abbey, although images of ruin and desolation, castles and palaces laid waste, and other such symbols of decay are as old as poetry itself. Below, we introduce ten of the most evocative poems about castles, ruins, and sites of decay.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Eternity’s a terrible thought’, as Tom Stoppard famously said. ‘I mean, where’s it all going to end?’ Poets have often dealt with the vast and limitless, the boundless and infinite – whether it’s the concept of the eternal (in time) or the idea of the infinite universe. Or, indeed, the idea of living forever. The ten poems we’ve gathered together below all address some aspect of the eternal or the infinite.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
How many times have you heard someone say, ‘I don’t read poetry. I just don’t get it.’ Or perhaps, ‘Why can’t poets just come out and say what they want to say? Why say something in such a way?’ For many people, poetry is ‘difficult’.