By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Randall Jarrell once said that a good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning 5 or 6 times. And many poets have ‘seen the light’, and written about it: whether a sudden flash of light like a lightning bolt, or a deeper, more enduring, contemplative ‘light’ pointing to a spiritual experience. Here are ten of the very best poems about light.