This year we will be enjoying, reading and learning the following poems:

Winter days - Gareth Owen

Biting air
Winds blow
City streets
Under snow

Noses red
Lips sore
Runny eyes
Hands raw

Chimneys smoke
Cars crawl
Piled snow
On garden wall

Slush in gutters
Ice in lanes
Frosty patterns
On window panes

Morning call
Lift up head
Nipped by winter
Stay in bed

In Flanders Field - John McCrae

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

    That mark our place; and in the sky

    The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

        In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

    The torch; be yours to hold it high.

    If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

        In Flanders fields.

Harriet Tubman - Eloise Greenfield 

Harriet Tubman didn’t take no stuff
Wasn’t scared of nothing neither
Didn’t come in this world to be no slave
And wasn’t going to stay one either

“Farewell!” she sang to her friends one night
She was mighty sad to leave ’em
But she ran away that dark, hot night
Ran looking for her freedom

She ran to the woods and she ran through the woods
With the slave catchers right behind her
And she kept on going till she got to the North
Where those mean men couldn’t find her

Nineteen times she went back South
To get three hundred others
She ran for her freedom nineteen times
To save Black sisters and brothers
Harriet Tubman didn’t take no stuff
Wasn’t scared of nothing neither
Didn’t come in this world to be no slave
And didn’t stay one either

And didn’t stay one either

The Land of Nod  - Robert Louis Stevenson

From breakfast on through all the day 

At home among my friends I stay, 

But every night I go abroad 

Afar into the land of Nod. 

All by myself I have to go, 

With none to tell me what to do — 

All alone beside the streams 

And up the mountain-sides of dreams. 

The strangest things are there for me, 

Both things to eat and things to see, 

And many frightening sights abroad 

Till morning in the land of Nod. 

Try as I like to find the way, 

I never can get back by day, 

Nor can remember plain and clear 

The curious music that I hear. 

Night Mail (Verse 1) - WH Auden 

This is the night mail crossing the Border, 
Bringing the cheque and the postal order, 

Letters for the rich, letters for the poor, 
The shop at the corner, the girl next door. 

Pulling up Beattock, a steady climb: 
The gradient's against her, but she's on time. 

Past cotton-grass and moorland boulder 
Shovelling white steam over her shoulder, 

Snorting noisily as she passes 
Silent miles of wind-bent grasses. 

Birds turn their heads as she approaches, 
Stare from bushes at her blank-faced coaches. 

Sheep-dogs cannot turn her course; 
They slumber on with paws across. 

In the farm she passes no one wakes, 
But a jug in a bedroom gently shakes. 

Fisherman Chant - John Agard

Sister river
Brother river
Mother river
Father river
O life giver
O life taker
O friend river
What have you
in store
for a poor
fisherman
today.

From my boat
I cast my net
to your heart
O friend river
and I hope
you return it
gleaming with silver
O friend river

Sister river
Brother river
Mother river
Father river
O life giver
O life taker
O friend river
What have you
in store
for a poor fisherman
today?