Today is National Poetry Day. As some readers might recall, 2026 is the Year for Reading, so a day celebrating poetry, a form of language that can be both read and spoken ought to be celebrated. Sadly, I fear that isn’t the case today in England.
In the past, when I have celebrated National Poetry Day on this blog, I have offered a poem I have written. One was about war, and sacrifice of young lives; another was about departure, in that case leaving a loved one at an airport.
Sadly, I note the latter of these was in a post more than a decade ago, in 2015. It has been remiss of me not to have highlighted poetry on this blog since then.
For today, I thought that I would offer one from a collection about Oxford, where I have lived for almost 50 years now: since 1979.
The Oxford Canal. (revised July 2024)
Work water now departed:
Leisure flows instead.
Gone barges pulling butties;
As tourist labour locks.
Only residents line banks,
Washing, sitting, growing,
Where dogs stand guard,
Cats enjoy stern sun.
Few walk that path
Horses once trampled.
Clear line unseen ‘neath
Dense overgrown takeover.
See solitude of wooden bridge.
Sentinel in skyline waiting.
Pulling rope restoring purpose:
Vertical to horizontal shift.
While silent lock’s door
Spills excess, seeking release
Granting access now, as narrowboat,
Cruiser, paddle board, gather height.
To silent reach, kingfisher domain,
Voles burrow bank, and vivid
Dragonflies skim blue and green,
Grey heron muting nature’s palate.
Man’s art intrudes, littering
Casually, disfiguring permanently.
Heming sides with barrack blocks.
Building canyons; cutting vistas.
As rural pubs welcomed
Bargee’s evening halt.
Mooring space now tethers
Holiday rentals.
Still canals survive.
Flagging future rails and
Concrete motorway routes.
Slowly amongst the haste
I have chosen this poem partly because I pass the end of the canal almost every time I walk into the city centre, but also because when I was Chair of the county council, during covid, not being able to have the usual fundraising dinner, I walked along the canal from Oxford to Banbury, alone, as a fund raiser for the charities I supported that year. The walk was a distance of around 26 miles, so not far oof the only marathon distance I have ever walked.
I am delighted to say that we have a Poetry Library in Oxford that runs workshops and activities with schools. I know from local book fairs that there are also a number of poetry circles in the city, at least in the west. I celebrate all their activities to help make this word form relevant to modern life.
So, three cheers for National Poetry Day, and please post your favourite poem in the comments.
Finally, for those that know Oxford and the saga of the buses and the Botley Road bridge, this reworking of Alfred Godley and his 1914 poem might strike a chord. For years growing up in London, I wondered what buses were doing ‘in the corn’ on arrival in Oxford it became obvious
Behold the bus
Processing like some affair of State
Not one, but, two, four, six or eight
Lumbering convoys rutting roads with weight
Clean engine, passengers, and double deck create.
Fares please: no cash, but mobile, card or pass
These days. Machines talk, as humans mute remain.
Card accepted; green light flashes, pass along the car.
Seat forward, backward, even sideways, or stand downstairs.
Along the Botley Road they rattle,
Down the High they trundle,
Creep slowly through the Cowley cycles
Rush headlong twenty miles along St Giles.
Deep in phones, passengers miss the engine roar
As fingers fly, while bus patiently pauses, absorbing
New influx of riders, whose hands held out,
Supplicated, is there space for us aboard your omnibus?
Of course, no longer implet in the Corn they are,
But still we see, Copia Motorum Borum.
But no longer is the cry! Domine, defende nos
Contra hos Motores Bos!
With apologies to Alfred Godley and his 1914 poem
