To celebrate National Poetry Day well known Exeter poets, Lawrence Sail and Anthony Wilson, will be reading their own and others’ poems which explore this year’s theme, Freedom. Find out more about the event here.

Ahead of the event we asked Lawrence Sail for five poems for the poetry-shy to try, and being a generous man, he gave us six.

“Where might anyone possibly begin to fish in the great ocean of poetry? To pick out such a small number of poems is to be at once aware of all the others which rightly clamour for attention. But all six below satisfy the notion of poetry as ‘memorable utterance’, and invite the reader to look with a fresh eye at such apparently simple subjects as a river, snow, an evening walk and, yes, a fish. Enjoy the poems for themselves, but also as a possible threshold to reading more work by the same authors. You will be well rewarded.” – Lawrence Sail

Five Poems for the Poetry-Shy to Try:

• As I Walked Out One Evening by W.H. Auden
• The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop
• Because I could not stop for Death by Emily Dickinson
• Prayer by Carol Ann Duffy
• The River in March by Ted Hughes
• Snow by Louis MacNeice

About Lawrence Sail

In addition to twelve books of poems, Lawrence Sail has published two books of essays and a memoir of childhood (Sift, Impress Books 2010). His book Waking Dreams: New & Selected Poems was a Poetry Book Society Special Commendation. Lawrence’s most recent book of poems, The Quick, from Bloodaxe Books, came out in 2015. He lives in Exeter.

If you’d like to read Lawrence’s recommended poems or any of his own, get in touch with us here.