Our schools’ poetry competition is open now for pupil poets from key stages 2,3 and 4. This year’s theme is: the voices of a river. Below are some poems to inspire you. Pick a beginning that catches your attention and click on the word ‘more’ to read the whole poem.
How well do any of these poems catch the ideas in our theme – making you see, hear, smell and feel the presence of a river, or of the wildlife that lives in and around it, or the people who spend time there? What connects here with your experiences and thoughts about rivers? Is there anything you’ve noticed that isn’t really captured in these poems?
Looking-glass River by Robert Louis Stevenson
Smooth it glides upon its travel,
Here a wimple, there a gleam
O the clean gravel!
O the smooth stream! … more
My River runs to thee by Emily Dickinson
My River runs to thee—
Blue Sea! Wilt welcome me?
My River wait reply—
Oh Sea—look graciously … more
Going for Water by Robert Frost
The well was dry beside the door
And so we went with pail and can
Across the fields behind the house
To seek the brook if still it ran; … more
River Journey by Moira Andrew
I was born high on the hills,
Jumping over stones,
Chuckling and laughing.
I listened to the winds playing … more
Inversnaid by Gerard Manley Hopkins
This darksome burn, horseback brown,
His rollrock highroad roaring down,
In coop and in comb the fleece of his foam
Flutes and low to the lake falls home … more
Heaven by Rupert Brooke
Fish (fly-replete, in depth of June,
Dawdling away their wat’ry noon)
Ponder deep wisdom, dark or clear,
Each secret fishy hope or fear … more
I asked the river by Valerie Bloom
‘Why do you run?’ I asked the river,
‘So fast I can’t compete.’
‘I run,’ the river said,
‘because I have some streams to meet.’ … more
The River in March by Ted Hughes
Now the river is rich, but her voice is low.
It is her Mighty Majesty the sea
Travelling among the villages incognito. … more
Extract from Dart by Alice Oswald
two places I’ve seen eels, bright whips of flow
like stopper waves the rivercurve slides through
trampling around at first you just make out
the elver movement of the running sunlight … more
Pike by Ted Hughes
Pike, three inches long, perfect
Pike in all parts, green tigering the gold.
Killers from the egg: the malevolent aged grin.
They dance on the surface among the flies. … more
Lines To A Dragon Fly by Walter Savage Landor
Life (priest and poet say) is but a dream;
I wish no happier one than to be laid
Beneath some cool syringa’s scented shade
Or wavy willow, by the running stream, … more
A Ramble by the River Side by John Clare
A ramble by the river’s side
In Spring time’s dewy eve
Where teal and widgeon turn to hide
In reeds which them receive … more
The Brook by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley … more
Sonnets from The River Duddon: After-Thought by William Wordsworth
I thought of Thee, my partner and my guide,
As being past away.—Vain sympathies!
For, backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes,
I see what was, and is, and will abide; … more
Literature & Landscape 