Apr 29, 2020
For the fourth and last week of National Poetry Month, we are challenging you to write an acrostic poem. Adults and kids will both have fun with this one! Share your acrostic work with your family and friends, on social media with #NPM2020, and with us @OPL_BPO.
There is still time to sow some inspiration in these last few days of Poetry Month, described by T.S. Eliot in what has been called the most important poem of the twentieth century:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
- The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot, 1922
Check out suggestions and available resources in this blog post.
And we are honoured to offer you a third poem from Ottawa’s English poet laureate, Deanna Young, for your enjoyment:
We Gather
In daylight we walk upon the land
like living children, a sunburnt tribe towards the woods
where light flashes among the trees like money.
Drawn to where the cow lies, her clean skull resting
on its pillow of musty leaves. White rib cage
a church where faeries pray
for their delicate lives, minutely sing.
In exile, we gather solemnly there to worship
what might lie beyond this place, where the cow
in her devastation now peacefully lives.
Where later, in pools of moonlight, we will swim,
fear lapping at our beds. For shore
we will swim, the other side, that shimmering
pasture where the cow still lows, still grazes. Wet grass
flecked white and yellow, the sweetest buds.
—from Reunion (Brick Books, 2018)