top five poems

1. Raglan Road - Patrick Kavanagh 2. Reading Gaol - Oscar Wilde 3. Rime Of The Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge (That's the three 'R's out of the way.) 4. ummm......I'll get back to you on the last two, I'm spoiled for choice.

1. Dulce et decorum est - Wilfred Owen (could so easily have been "Disabled" or "Anthem For Doomed Youth" , but "Dulce" got me interested in poetry as a kid.) 2. This Be The Verse - Philip Larkin (hilarious, so true) 3. Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night - Dylan Thomas (heart-wrenching) 4. Poem - Simon Armitage (a brilliant innovator; should be poet laureate, not that Motion loser) Hmm, just realised they're all men so far ... 5. One of two poems lil willow would hate: "Address to a haggis" by Robbie Burns or "The Early Purges" by Seamus Heaney. Sorry, no women, but Carol Ann Duffy would come close, I've got into her a lot more since Liana reintroduced me to her. I even had a dream recently I met her.

These aren't really in any particular order. They're not the the five poems that I think are the most beautiful or the best written. They're the ones that stick in my head the most. 1. Paul Birtill - Babies and beards 2. Marin Sorescu - Let's talk about the weather 3. Abraham Gibson - Shelter, food and you 4. Sophie Hannah - Driving me away 5. Benjamin Zephaniah - Robots of the future

Aw, i'm glad you mentioned benji. so often overlooked. i did "talkin' turkeys" during reading week for the kids in a scouse accent - and they loved it!

I have read these poems recently, 1. Hawk Roosting - Ted Hughes 2. Father William - Lewis Carroll ( a humour) 3. Mending Wall - Robert frost 4. The Stolen Boat - William Wordsworth 5. The King Fisher - W.H. Davis. The fifth one I enjoyed a lot. Mending Wall is no way less.

well... the top five (which change regularly) are 1. Porphyria's lover by Robert Browning...almost anything by Browning is worth reading 2. The Death Of Richard Beattie-Seaman by Tony Curtis...a wonderful piece by an underrated Welsh poet 3.Maud by Tennyson...one of the great poems in the language 4. Ozymandias by Shelley..read it and weep, as relevant now as it ever was, 5.Myfanwy by Betjeman just because I lkie it!!

Ello.. Mmm.. five that I re-read recently- 1- First Duino Elegy Rainer Maria Rilke. 2- The Water Snake Simon Armitage 3- Harlow House Lyn Lifshin 4- Ararat Evgeny Rein 5- The Drunken Boat Rambo Will have another go with Duffy (Anything studied at school seems to give me shivers but will ave a go, The Something Country, if I remember hazily.. also think The World's Wife is knocking around here somewhere as well) And perhaps Shelley. .. making this list makes me want to go read some more Rilke first tho.. bloody marvellous bloke! ...byzebye.

Oohh this is tough for me, as I don't read nearly as much poetry as I should. 1. "We thought of Ashfield, and imagined trees" by Simon Armitage. 2. That sonnet between Romeo and Juliet (Don't know if this counts, being lines in a play and all) 3. Nest, by Amanda Dalton. 4. The Raven, by Edgar Allen Poe. 5. "I am very bothered" by Simon Armitage (yep, two Armitages in my list)