Poetry by Heart

by Andrew Motion (Editor)

Familiar poems and almost unknown poems. Love poems and war poems. Funny poems and heartbroken poems. Poems that re-create the world we know and poems written on the dark side of the moon.

Poetry by Heart is an essential collection of over 200 poems, from Geoffrey Chaucer to Emily Dickinson, from Christina Rossetti to Benjamin Zephaniah, all carefully chosen for their suitability for learning and reciting. This is an anthology which celebrates the age-old pleasure of reciting poems - an anthology for all ages to treasure.

Genres: Poetry, Anthologies, Nonfiction, Unfinished

576 pages, Paperback

First published October 2, 2014

About the author

Sir Andrew Motion, FRSL is an English poet, novelist and biographer, who presided as Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009.

Motion was appointed Poet Laureate on 1 May 1999, following the death of Ted Hughes, the previous incumbent. The Nobel Prize-winning Northern Irish poet and translator Seamus Heaney had ruled himself out for the post. Breaking with the tradition of the laureate retaining the post for life, Motion stipulated that he would stay for only ten years. The yearly stipend of £200 was increased to £5,000 and he received the customary butt of sack.

He wanted to write "poems about things in the news, and commissions from people or organisations involved with ordinary life," rather than be seen a 'courtier'. So, he wrote "for the TUC about liberty, about homelessness for the Salvation Army, about bullying for ChildLine, about the foot and mouth outbreak for the Today programme, about the Paddington rail disaster, the 11 September attacks and Harry Patch for the BBC, and more recently about shell shock for the charity Combat Stress, and climate change for the song cycle I've finished for Cambridge University with Peter Maxwell Davies." In 2003, Motion wrote Regime change, a poem in protest at Invasion of Iraq from the point of view of Death walking the streets during the conflict, and in 2005, Spring Wedding in honour of the wedding of the Prince of Wales to Camilla Parker Bowles. Commissioned to write in the honour of 109 year old Harry Patch, the last surviving 'Tommy' to have fought in World War I, Motion composed a five part poem, read and received by Patch at the Bishop's Palace in Wells in 2008. As laureate, he also founded the Poetry Archive an on-line library of historic and contemporary recordings of poets reciting their own work.

Motion remarked that he found some of the duties attendant to the post of poet laureate difficult and onerous and that the appointment had been "very, very damaging to [his] work". The appointment of Motion met with criticism from some quarters. As he prepared to stand down from the job, Motion published an article in The Guardian which concluded, "To have had 10 years working as laureate has been remarkable. Sometimes it's been remarkably difficult, the laureate has to take a lot of flak, one way or another. More often it has been remarkably fulfilling. I'm glad I did it, and I'm glad I'm giving it up – especially since I mean to continue working for poetry." Motion spent his last day as Poet Laureate holding a creative writing class at his alma mater, Radley College, before giving a poetry reading and thanking Peter Way, the man who taught him English at Radley, for making him who he was. Carol Ann Duffy succeeded him as Poet Laureate on 1 May 2009.

Andrew Motion nació en 1952. Estudió en el University College de Oxford y empezó su carrera enseñando inglés en la Universidad de Hull. También ha sido director de Poetry Review, director editorial de Chatto & Windus, y Poeta Laureado; asimismo, fue cofundador del Poetry Archive, y en 2009 se le concedió el título de Sir por su obra literaria. En la actualidad es profesor de escritura creativa en el Royal Holloway, de la Universidad de Londres. Es miembro de la Royal Society of Literature y vive en Londres. Con un elenco de nobles marineros y crueles piratas, y llena de historias de amor y de valentía, Regreso a la isla del tesoro es una trepidante continuación de La isla del tesoro, escrita con extraordinaria autenticidad y fuerza imaginativa por uno de los grandes escritores ingleses actuales.

Reviews

[Anna P (whatIreallyRead) · Rating 5 out of 5]

BEST. POETRY. COLLECTION. EVER. I bought Poetry by Heart on a whim when browsing a local bookstore. And it turned out to be a great decision! It now has so many bookmarks in it it's not even funny!

The book starts with an itroduction explaining the backstory of this collection. Apparently some poets got together and decided to revive the dying art of reciting poems from memory. So they selected 200 poems - starting with Middle Ages and through to the modern times - and set up a competition in British schools where kids recite them. There's a national final at the end. For this experience to be educational as well, they set up additional resources. Like a website where you can learn all about the poem and it's author, and hear poets (and sometimes even the authors) reading these poems aloud. This book is a printed verion of this selection of poems and the educational info.



It's a pretty big book - about 550 pages total. The poems themselves take up 326 pages, the rest is commentary. The poems are arranged in a chronological order, so you can realy trace how poetry itself evolved, the way poets influenced each other and the popularity of styles and techniques ebbed.

So half of the book is this amazing collection of poems. No more than 1 poem per author. I saw a lot of familiar authors in this book - like Geoffrey Chaucer, John Donne, Shakespeare, John Milton, William Blake, Robert Burns, Wordsworth, Keats, Byron, the Brownings, Dickinson, Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Kipling, Robert Frost, Yeats, T.S. Eliot, Auden, Plath, etc. Their featured poems were mostly unfamiliar to me. So it's not like they anthologized the same poems everyone already knows.

There were also a lot of lovely poets I first discovered here. The modern poets (after Plath) were almost completely new to me, but there were many classical ones I haven't heard of before, too.

The second half of the book is educational info about those poems. Each poem had a page dedicated to it - with sections "about the poem" and "about the poet" and a QR-code which leads you to a recordig of this poem being recited. It looks like this:



And I must tell you, it's absolutely brilliant! It's the best!!! First off, I've been out of school long enough to be nostalgic about this faintly textbook-ish feeling, of someone gently trying to educate and inspire me while not being overbearing.

Secondly, it enhanced my reading experience VERY much. The "about the poem" section had commentary about both the contents, meaning and background of the poem, and also about the technique, style, ryme scheme of it. English is my third language, and poems can be pretty obscure. There were a lot of poems I initially "didn't get", and this section really helped! There were questions there, too. So the commentator doesn't claim to have all the definitive answers.

The "about the poet" section was very interesting as well, containing some biographical data, which a lot of the times contributed to my amazement and helped my ignorance. Some of these poets were really amazing! Like:

- Aphra Behn was both the first female author to make her living through writing AND she was a spy for the British crown! How cool is that?!

- did you know Robert Burns was a ploughman?! I'm pretty sure you did, but I didn't. So my mind was blown.

Now imagine reading this beautiful poem:

My prime of youth is but a frost of cares,
My feast of joy is but a dish of pain,
My crop of corn is but a field of tares,
And all my good is but vain hope of gain.
The day is gone and yet I saw no sun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

The spring is past, and yet it hath not sprung,
The fruit is dead, and yet the leaves are green,
My youth is gone, and yet I am but young,
I saw the world, and yet I was not seen,
My thread is cut, and yet it was not spun,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

I sought my death and found it in my womb,
I lookt for life and saw it was a shade,
I trode the earth and knew it was my tomb,
And now I die, and now I am but made.
The glass is full, and now the glass is run,
And now I live, and now my life is done.

and flipping to the end of the book to find out that the author wrote it while awaiting his execution for a conspiracy to assasinate Elizabeth I. And the poem survived because he included it in his final letter to his wife. I mean... WOW. I HAVE NO WORDS. Now imagine reading just the poem. It's still really good, but it's not quite the same.

I took my time reading Poetry by Heart because I enjoyed it so. I actually read most of the poems aloud, some of them dozens of times, then flipped to the back of the book for commentary. So it took me almost 2 months. I had the best time and it's going straight to my favorites shelf!

[Emmkay · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love a good poetry anthology, and this one is absolutely grand. I renewed it the maximum number of times from the library, then kept it well past the final return date, and am now reluctantly turning it in, assuaged by the knowledge that I’ve ordered a copy from the UK which should arrive in a month or so.

It seems that in the UK there is an annual competition, by the same name as the book, for children and teens for memorizing and reciting poems. This is the associated anthology (though from the excellent website I see the collection is curated and augmented on a regular basis) - not children’s poetry, but excellent English-language poetry arranged chronologically from Beowulf on up. At the back of the book, each poem has an associated page of information - on the poem itself, drawing attention to aspects of it and asking interesting questions, as well as biographical information on the poet and, sometimes, a QR code to a recitation. I really liked the structure.

As for the poems themselves, it was a wonderful, varied collection. There were some of my old favourites - Dover Beach, The River Merchant’s Wife, Ozymandias, The Second Coming. And many more that were fresh and new to me as well. I did like Stevie Smith’s ‘The Galloping Cat’, for instance! (‘Oh I am a cat that likes to/Gallop about doing good’). Also, to name but a few, James Berry’s ‘On an Afternoon Train from Purley to Victoria, 1955’, ‘Wounds’ by Michael Langley, and Elma Mitchell’s ‘Thoughts after Ruskin.’ It was also quite nice to discover that I now really enjoyed (though I think it was an excerpt - God, poems used to be long) Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,’ which proved the perfect improving bedtime read to settle the mind before a big day at work.

[Judith Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I worked for some years at an independent boarding school, founded in 1924 by three young female teachers who wanted to give an education that was a bit more relaxed than Wycombe Abbey, a ‘blue-stocking’ school where they had previously been employed. Their intake over time included the daughters of Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie. They had very few strict rules, rather using trust than the rod to keep their pupils on the straight and narrow, and one of the hardest detentions which could be handed out by prefects was to learn a poem by heart. As alumni officer, I had the pleasure of meeting a number of elderly ladies who had been naughty girls at school, and who had benefited all their lives from the storehouse of poems thus accumulated!

This stunning anthology is linked to a scheme initiated in 2011 for secondary school aged pupils to enter a competition involving reading a poem aloud. It’s full of wonderful poets which I had never heard of, and I feel really grateful to the editors, Julie Blake, Mike Dixon, Andrew Motion and Jean Sprackland, for putting it together, and for the informative suggested interpretations and poet mini-biogs given at the back.

Highly recommended!

[Sophie Crane · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's Not just children’s poems. Really enjoyed and great value as second-hand book.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great book I am grateful to receive from Penguin in Goodreads giveaway. As it is very much a book to be dipped into over time, I am reviewing without reading all 200 poems.
I have heard some of the winning pupils read poems(very impressively) on radio Four from the Poetry by Heart competition, which this book is allied to. I am well past school age, but this collection will appeal to all who love anthologies of poetry. That they have been chosen for their suitability to be read aloud is appealing, and each poem has a corresponding small section if you want thought on the meanings of some of the verses or images. Of course not all poems will appeal but there is a wide variety.
For a treat I listen online to a favourite poem being read, this book will encourage you to read to yourself or to others, or use the scan links to recordings of the poems being read,sometimes by the poet for more recent poems.
There is no list of poets, which I would have liked, only first lines and is quite bulky but has an attractive cover and a great deal of thought has been put into the project.

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wish I'd realised that there was notes on the poems and poets when I started reading this collection because somehow I think that might have made it a more satisfying read? Maybe if the notes were arranged after the poems? I don't know. I just think the layout was a bit clunky in this particular form. Interesting content though. And I'm a sucker for a pretty cover.

[Andrea Way · Rating 4 out of 5]

Won in a Goodreads giveaway. Very good poems very entertaining have been reading here and there since Christmas

[Nicole · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was wonderful.

[Katrina Sark · Rating 2 out of 5]

p.68-69 – Mary Robinson, “Female Fashions for 1799”

A FORM, as any taper, fine;
A head like half-print bason;
Where golden cords, and bands entwine,
As rich as fleece of JASON.

A pair of shoulders strong and wide,
Like country clown enlisting;
Bare arms long dangling by the side,
And shows of ragged listing!

Cravats like towels, thick and broad,
Long tippets made of bear-skin,
Muffs that a RUSSIAN might applaud,
And rouge to spoil a fair skin.

Long petticoats to hide the feet,
Silk hose with clocks of scarlet;
A load of perfume, sickening sweet,
Bought of PARISIAN VARLET.

A bush of hair, the brow to shade,
Sometimes the eyes to cover;
A necklace that might be displayed
By OTAHEITEAN lover!

A bowl of straw to deck the head,
Like porringer unmeaning;
A bunch of POPPIES flaming red,
With motly ribands streaming.

Bare ears on either side the head,
Like wood-wild savage SATYR;
Tinted with deep vermillion red,
To shame the blush of nature.

Red elbows, gauzy gloves, that add
An icy covering merely;
A wadded coat, the shape to pad,
Like Dutch-women – or nearly.

Such is CAPRICE! But lovely kind!
Oh! Let each mental feature
Proclaim the labour of the mind,
And leave your charms to NATURE.

[O.Temple · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh what a perfect way to spend a rainy day!
I've long desired to get back into poetry, and this book has very much recaptured my love of of it. Before you start this book there are 2 things you should know:
1 - At the back of the book there is brief commentary on each poem, as well as a bit of background on the poet (This is not made so clear at the front)
2 - The newer poems have QR codes that take you to a recorded reading and explanation.
Now, admittedly I've only tried this twice! The first time I got a file error code, the 2nd time it took me to the correct audio. It's a shame the QR code is on the inside of the page leaf, so not as easy if it had been on the right, but this is pretty pernickety of me to say so (!)
I do love a pretty book cover, and it has a nice velvety matte feel to it. I also appreciate where the original language has been kept for some of the older poems. And where the language is too old, a modern translation is provided afterwards.
If, like me, you're looking to jump back into the enjoyment of poetry, this is definitely one to have on your shelf. The poems are not too long either, there's a good range of selection.
Overall, a very professional product that I feel very fortunate to have come across!

[George Eraclides · Rating 4 out of 5]

As the title suggests, this is a selection of poems which are part of a schools' competition, to be memorised and recited. An excellent idea and I would like to see a popular TV station in Australia try it out. Of course, all true poetry should be read out loud, recited, in order for the rhythmic sounds, pattern of metre and so on, to be heard clearly. Poetry has form, it is musical; it is not just chopped-up prose as much of today's poetry I read/recite actually is. Please, if you cannot master the basics of poetic form, just write prose and call it - prose. There are some fine selections and some unfamiliar gems in this collection. A useful feature is that each poem has an entry in an extensive appendix, discussing the poem and the poet's background. If you enjoy poetry, give this volume a try. See if you can memorise the poems and recite them properly. Good for your mind. Keeps it young(ish). And it is a lot of fun.

[Steph De Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read my fair share of poetry anthologies, and this simply is one of the best I've ever encountered. It's excellently curated, featuring dozens of poetry's "greatest hits" alongside many others that weren't familiar to me but that I'm delighted now to be acquainted with.

A feature of this anthology that I particularly love is the inclusion of notes at the end that include a brief analysis of each poem, a biographical sketch of the poet and, where available, a QR code that links to an audio recording of the poem in question. Particularly for a collection that champions an aural appreciation of poetry, this is an apt and welcome innovation.

I read this slowly, over the course of a month, and loved every moment of it. I can't recommend this anthology highly enough!

[Eva · Rating 3 out of 5]

I understand that this collection had a very specific goal in mind - to prepare a selection for a national competition in poetry recitation - which is why I find it so bizarre that the great majority of the selected poems deal with death, war or religious themes. I'm not saying that these are not worthy topics for poetry, but surely young people deserve to choose from a slightly more colourful roster of themes - unless these were picked a very particular jingoistic old men who are presumably judging these competitions in mind.

[Michelle Grech · Rating 5 out of 5]

A range of interesting poems.

[JL Salty · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read over the course of two weeks to curate collection for 7th grade poetry project.

[Fleur · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5.
In short, I’d say, yes. But also… no. Just… more yes than no, you know?

[Brooke Brodsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

The edition of this book that I read is not listed on the GoodReads list (My copy was published in 2001), as I purchased the book when I was expecting my first baby. It is a compellation of poetry written by children; various editions follow, the poems are published by Scholastic from a national children's poetry contest. The poetry is simple and sweet, not deep or incredibly thought provoking, yet I love it. Each page is illustrated beautifully with pictures that bring the poems to life and for a younger reader, or a child who is being read to, these pictures do a great deal to make each poem more interesting. I rated the book 4 stars because although the poems are short and sweet I find myself being called back to this volume time and time again. The chapters are divided based on topic - holidays, fantasy, length. One chapter, "Wistful and Thoughtful" does draw poetry based on the deeper thoughts and even fears of the child poets, and that is perhaps the reason that I did not give the book a full 5 stars - this chapter did not seem to fit in with the rest of the lighthearted theme of the book.

[Mxj · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book just because, not knowing what to expect but was all BUT disappointed !
There is a lot of different poems/poets from a lot of periods, so you'll definitely find something you love :) (as the name suggests, i recommend you read this aloud it makes it even more beautiful)

Plus, there is a whole part of the book that contains explanation and information about the poems if you want to learn more !

[Geoff Cumberbeach]

A fascinating book attempting to rekindle an interest in poetry. Based on the hughly successful UK secondary-school recitation competioion, now in its third year.