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.
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...
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After Long
Busyness by Robert Bly
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Everything
is Going to be Alright by Derek Mahon
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I Go Back To May 1937
by Sharon Olds
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If We Must Die by
Claude McKay
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Indelible,
Miraculous by Julia Darling
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Invictus by William
Ernest Henley
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Late Fragment by
Raymond Carver
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Machines
by Michael Donaghy
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Night,
Death, Mississippi by Robert Hayden
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On the Grashopper and Cricket
by John Keats
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Phenomenal Woman by
Maya Angelou
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Prayer
by Carol Ann Duffy
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Prosepoem towards a
definition of itself by Brian Patten
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Stopping by Woods on a
Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
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The Identification
by Roger McGough
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The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
by TS Eliot
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The Moment by Margaret Atwood
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The Mower by Philip
Larkin
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The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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The
Sun is Rising by John Donne
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This is Just to Say
by William Carlos Williams
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Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
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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...
