Nearing Forty...*

I turn 40 soon.

I know.

I think I was more fussed by move from my teens into my twenties so I'm not stressing about it. Instead I'm distracting myself by thinking of 40 things I can do when I'm 40.

The first thing I thought of was to learn at least 40 poems by heart - partly inspired by the Poetry By Heart programme in schools and partly by being reminded of Invictus by William Ernest Henley following the death of Nelson Mandela. I reckon it can't be a bad thing to have an arsenal of poems to draw on for any situation life throws at you. The poem I have by heart (and yes, I know it's only four lines long) is Epilogue by Grace Nichols.

Anyway, I asked some of my friends on Facebook to tell me their favourite poems. The ones they've held in their hearts since the moment they heard them and they came up with some crackers. Some poems I already love and will enjoy learning by heart and some I'd not come across before. A couple are probably a bit too long to make it to the shortlist of 40 but it's been great to read. I'll be flicking through my poetry collections and anthologies over the Christmas holidays to add to the list but here are the poems that have been suggested so far...

After Long Busyness by Robert Bly

Everything is Going to be Alright by Derek Mahon

I Go Back To May 1937 by Sharon Olds

If We Must Die by Claude McKay

Indelible, Miraculous by Julia Darling

Invictus by William Ernest Henley

Late Fragment by Raymond Carver

Machines by Michael Donaghy

Night, Death, Mississippi by Robert Hayden

On the Grashopper and Cricket by John Keats

Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou

Prayer by Carol Ann Duffy

Prosepoem towards a definition of itself by Brian Patten

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

The Identification by Roger McGough

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot

The Moment by Margaret Atwood

The Mower by Philip Larkin

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Sun is Rising by John Donne

This is Just to Say by William Carlos Williams

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

I'm probably going to blog about my approach to learning each poem (that will be another thing to try when I'm 40 - keeping a regular blog!). And I'm interested to see if I'll still have all forty poems in my head this time next year. We'll see.

*About six years ago I came across the poem Nearing Forty by Derek Walcott and now here I am...