Another plant inspired poem for Sunday.  Ted Hughes’s (1930-98) collection of poems about the natural world – Flowers & Insects – was published in 1986 and included this one: Sunstruck Foxglove. We follow it with a reading of the poem taken from The Ted Hughes Society website by a certain Nicholas Bland, a second year student at …

“When Great Trees Fall” was Maya Angelou’s (1928 – 2014) last poem in her fifth volume of poetry, I Shall Not Be Moved. Quoted widely at the time of her recent death it reads like a personal tribute, speaking of the loss and mourning of something far-reaching and influential; a ‘great soul’. The poem gracefully …

This weekend The Guardian was the only national newspaper to report the results of this year’s National Poetry Competition. The winning entry was by a woman called Linda French and the poem was called Bernard and Cerinthe (click the link to read it!).   A plant-inspired poem, it depicts a man’s (Bernard) liking for Cerinthe, and was chosen …