Poets often find themselves backed into a corner when writing more traditional rhyming poetry. They find they’ve ended a line with the unpromising word ‘orange’ and now have to try to find a word that rhymes with it, or else change the offending word for something more rhyme-friendly. But ‘world’ […]
Tag: Poems
On Quitting Social Media: A Poem
In lieu of my usual Secret Library column this Friday, an announcement – not a particularly momentous one – and a poem. Yesterday, I made the decision to leave Twitter for good. This is nothing to do with my experience of running the @InterestingLit account (which has, 99.9% of the […]
8 of the Best Poems about Shopping and Consumerism
Shopping and consumerism, the culture of buying things – especially things we don’t strictly ‘need’ – may not be as popular a topic for poets as beautiful landscapes or falling in love, but especially in the last hundred years or so, many poets have explored the attraction of shopping and […]
Five of the Best Poems about Social Media and Texting
Social media has changed poetry, at least in terms of the sheer number of people who now read poems on a regular basis, or buy poems (Rupi Kaur’s collection Milk and Honey was a runaway bestseller). This has led to fierce debates about what poetry is and what it should […]
Five of the Best Edmund Spenser Poems Everyone Should Read
Edmund Spenser (c. 1552-99) is one of the greatest of the Elizabethan poets. When he died in 1599 and was interred in Westminster Abbey, alongside his hero Geoffrey Chaucer, it’s rumoured that Shakespeare may have been among the mourners tossing poems into his grave.