Caged Bird

Maya Angelou explores suffering, inequality and a people’s refusal to give up in this hard-hitting poem.

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Written Near a Port on a Dark Evening

Charlotte Smith negotiates the shifting sands of life in this dark and stormy sonnet.

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If you think that getting married means living happily-ever-after, Dennis Scott will probably want to have a word.

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Gerard Manley Hopkins explores what it feels like to be trapped in your skin.

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Norman Nicholson warns us not to wish our lives away.

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Looking at life differently in Carol Rumens’ challenging poem

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After many years away from the country of her birth, Sujata Bhatt wonders if it’s finally time to share her memories of India.

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Liz Lochhead casts a spell in this magical realist poem.

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William Cowper visits a woody riverbank by which he passed many pleasant childhood days… to find it irrevocably changed.

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Isobel Dixon shows us that older really does mean wiser as she reminisces ruefully about her childhood.

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