The Poetry Society launches an online poll today for Britons to vote for the poem they would most like to see sent on a space mission. People can pick from eight poems shortlisted by the society, or suggest their own favourite.

The shortlist:

John Agard - Earthwalk

Moniza Alvi - Homesick for the Earth

Eavan Boland - Night Feed

Sheenagh Pugh - Do You Think We'll Ever

John Hegley - Forever Roman

Adrian Mitchell - Human Beings

Edwin Morgan - The First Men on Mercury

Eva Salzman - Promising

And the link:
http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/npd/npdpoll.htm

Anna,

If this means they'll never come back, I'd vote for everything by Ted Hughes.

Terry

Lol Terry!

Ditto for bloody John Donne! I hated that metaphysic melancholy shit in school.

But staying positive, I think I'd send:

Jerusalem

by William Blake


And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark satanic mills?

Bring me my bow of burning gold!
Bring me my arrows of desire!
Bring me my spear! O clouds, unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire!

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.

Despite being taken over by embarrassing flag-waving 'bravo!' hollering Toffs every year at the Albert Hall, Jerusalem still sends the hairs on the back of my neck tingling.

One of my favourite poems is this one by Juan Ramon Jimenez (which may be called 'A Recondite Corner' but I'm not sure), and one which I think would tell extra-terrestrials quite a lot about humans on this planet.


... and I will leave. But the birds will stay, singing:
and my garden will stay, with its green tree,
with its water well.
Many afternoons the skies will be blue and placid,
and the bells in the belfry will chime,
as they are chiming this very afternoon.
The people who have loved me will pass away,
and the town will burst anew every year.
But my spirit will always wander nostalgic
in the same recondite corner of my flowery garden.

Ooh, Terry, gorgeous poem.
I'd probably want something in there from Carol Ann Duffy, or John Clare, although it might not really fit the bill. Or Jackie Kay, or Adrian Mitchell for a snapshot of earthly humour.

That's lovely Terry. One of my fave poems (which inspired my novel and which I'm hoping to use on the inside cover of my book) is Canadian James Reaney's beautiful poem, Antichrist as a Child.

When Antichrist was a child
He caught himself tracing
The capital letter A
On a window sill
And wondered why
Because his name contained no A.
And as he crookedly stood
In his mother’s flower-garden
He wondered why she looked so sadly
Out of an upstairs window at him.
He wondered why his father stared so
Whenever he saw his little son
Walking in his soot-coloured suit.
He wondered why the flowers
And even the ugliest weeds
Avoided his fingers and his touch.
And when his shoes began to hurt
Because his feet were becoming hooves
He did not let on to anyone
For fear they would shoot him for a monster.
He wondered why he more and more
Dreamed of eclipses of the sun,
Of sunsets, ruined towns and zeppelins,
And especially inverted, upside down churches.

What? And nothing by the unique and wonderful Neil Rollinson??? (who must surely write the sexiest poems in the western world!) Whatever are the Poetry Society thinking of!!?

)

A
xxx

Impossible to say really...is the idea to give the little green men an idea about us, or to celebrate the human race, or what?
Not really fulfilling either of those categories, what about this by ee cummings, one of his I like to read often:


if there are any heavens my mother will(all by herself)have
one. It will not be a pansy heaven nor
a fragile heaven of lilies-of-the-valley but
it will be a heaven of blackred roses

my father will be(deep like a rose
tall like a rose)

standing near my

(swaying over her
silent)
with eyes which are really petals and see

nothing with the face of a poet really which
is a flower and not a face with
hands
which whisper
This is my beloved my

(suddenly in sunlight

he will bow,

& the whole garden will bow)

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Love the Antichrist one , JB
x
tc

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Just read the website properly so see the idea now....of the ones they've highlighted I'd go for John Agard, but I lovel the Eavan Boland one, too

No offence intended to any one who's participated in this thread, but what a completely fatuous idea!
What is this obsession with top tens of things? Now that we're bored with working out how much art is 'worth', we have to start making lists out of it, for the benefit, presumably, of life-forms, which, if they do exist, will proabably be infinitely more intelligent and sophisticated than us and therefore depise the concept in the first place!
I'm going away to read a book, any book, that's not on somebody's bloody list!!


Mike


<Added>

That's the Scottish spelling of 'probably', by the way.

;)

Oh Mike, but it's harmless isn't it? It's also a good way of acknowledging the effect someone's work has, how far sweeping it is.

Who knows? Maybe one day, a canister bearing mankind's last surviving poem will crash land on a populated planet, and spark a new golden age of universal peace?

JB

Basho's final haiku would win it for me every time

Sick on journey
over parched fields,
Dreams wander on

Might be a fitting finale if we ever harm the planet to the point that the message into space is also an SOS.

Glyn Maxwell's 'One of the Splendours'. The description of 'the bird/that seems to be half air' is astonishing in its simplicity. The whole poem, about naming, is superb.
On the same topic, Margaret Atwood's 'You Begin' examines the way in which a child begins to learn the world through language. The lines 'your hand is a warm stone / I hold between two words' really conjures up the delicacy of language, and its power.

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I also feel that Boland's 'Night Feed' is not one of her best. 'That the Science of Cartography Is Limited' is a far more powerful poem, as its subject, the classification of Ireland by the 19th century Colonial cartographers, is one still relevant today. It is one of those rare examples of good political poetry (unlike Harold Pinter's, which is fairly poor).